Performance Evaluation of Ekantakuna Intersection

Abstract

Majority of the intersections in Kathmandu valley are unsignalized and hence traffic management becomes one of the emerging issues for traffic police and traffic designers. The number of vehicles in Kathmandu Valley is increasing at the rate of 12% annually (Department of Transport Management, 2018). The manual traffic management is very tedious and hectic nowadays. The consequence leads to traffic congestion and sometimes crashes too. Hence, the performance evaluation of such unsignalized intersection is essential and considering the real time situations, scenario analysis should be done. The research was carried out in Ekantakuna Intersection. The data's were collected in Ekantakuna Intersection through video-graphic surveying during weekdays: Monday to Friday both morning and evening during peak hours (9 to 11 AM in morning and 4 to 6 PM in evening).The model was developed in PTV VISSIM ( Micro-simulation software ) and thus the developed model was calibrated and validated using traffic volume. The relationship between field volume (actual volume) and VISSIM volume (Simulated Volume) was found with the help of R² Value (Coefficient of Determination) which is found to be 0.9993 which indicates that variance of VISSIM output explains 99.9 percentage of variance in field data's. Pedestrian movement was not given priority and hence pedestrian simulation is not considered. Total three scenario analysis were performed in base case scenario. Among them the best scenario analysis was found to be scenario 1 which indicates  the restriction of vehicles from service lanes to main lanes and allowing the movement of vehicles from Balkhu(service) to Satdobato(service) and Jawalakhel lanes, and Satdobato(service) to Balkhu(service ) and Bhaisepati lane.