| dc.description.abstract | The high levels of congestions in the city of Nairobi have exceeded the slow increments in transportation infrastructure supply in many. This dramatic increase in traffic volume is causing various social, environmental and economic problems. In dense urban areas, adding capacity through construction of new or expanding existing infrastructure is difficult due to lack of space and prohibitive costs. A more viable approach to cope with the congestion problem is to monitor traffic congestion, understand the causes of its formation and development, and use the aforementioned knowledge in traffic management systems and transportation planning to mitigate traffic congestion. To study the congestion problems, a sample transit route was used (46 Kawangware). Four Matatus plying this route were fitted with GPS gadgets for traffic data collection (GPS position, speed and timestamp). A System was developed to receive and process traffic data in real time. The developed System provided interfaces to monitor average speed and travel time for the whole route in real time; hence one is able to gauge overall congestion levels at any given time. The algorithm for calculating average speeds was developed in such away to take care of the missing data as the gadgets used to collect data could not cover the whole route at any given time. Collected data was analyzed to identify congestion hotspots and traffic patterns of the route.The results obtained from the study indicate that weekends experience less congestion than the rest of the weekdays. Tuesdays reflect highest level of congestion with an average travel time of 1 hour for distance of 10.39 km, while during weekends the average travel time is 25 minutes. The results also show an upward congestion levels trend between Monday and Friday. This reflects the rhythm of city life: traffic congestion on Fridays is typically higher than that on Mondays. Finally the study identified congestion hotspots for route under study which include route segment between Olendume to Yaya, Hurligham, Kenyatta Avenue to NHIF and Haile Selassie. | en_US |
