Roadside Friction, its Impact and Remedial Measures on Traffic Characteristics in Srinagar, Jammu&Kashmir (India)

Vehicles travelling on Srinagar city have precipitously increased resulting in an increase in traffic congestion and also leading decrease in the operation integrity of transportation. In spite of high financing in road and transportation developments, Srinagar city faces high and increasing problems of congestion, traffic accidents, air and noise pollution. Traffic congestion is particularly seen near bus stops, which occur due to the stoppage of the vehicle on the carriageway, causing shrinkage of road width by forming bottlenecks and ultimately leading the traffic jams. Traffic congestion in the city also got increased due to the high increase of private automobiles with the public transport for limited roadway space. Usage of private automobiles considerably declines the efficiency of public transportation buses and also causes increase in the traffic density on the roads. It is because of the fact that people using public transportation have to waste lot of time at bus stops and also in the buses to reach the destination, which also lead to change mind setup of the people and to get diverted for the usage of private automobiles. This whole scenario reduces efficiency and causes decline in the usage of public transport. The purpose of this project is to determine the roadway capacity loss at bus stops due to limited road width and later, after observing the situation by proper analysis of the collected data, remedial measures for the said cause is recommended for the smooth flow to the traffic. Data used for the analysis are collected for Srinagar city from two spots namely Pantha-chowk bus stop and Dalgate bus stop. The roadway is divided into two sections (A - Before bus stops, B - At bus stops). Based on bus arriving frequency during both the time, bus stop capacity has been defined. Results& analysis showed significant loss in roadway capacity for on-street bus stops. From the results, proper remedial measures were taken into consideration for the smooth flow to the vehicles moving on carriageway.