Transportation/Traffic  Management Systems Demand Management

  Maaza Mekuria, PE

Axum Design Corp.

Boston, Massachusetts

ICCEMCE-03, International Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Computational Mechanics, Geotechnical and Transportation Engineering

 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - January 9-10, 2003.

With the advent of the automobile, travel as we know it has changed dramatically. It is possible to travel from place to place in a short period of time.

The ease of mobility has brought new challenges to the Transportation Engineering field.

Some of the challenges are

• Congestion
• Crashes
• Environmental deterioration
• Depletion of Natural resources

In the developed countries several solutions are being used to remedy the after effects of the automobile explosion. The move towards Management Systems shows that there is no future in building more and more capacity to meet the ever increasing demand. Hence various alternative strategies are being devised with respect to Travel Demand Management.

Some of these strategies are

• High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Systems –
• Bus Transit Systems
• Rapid Transit Systems
• Bicycle Paths
• Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)

This paper explores these and other issues affecting the growth of a community/city/country/region with respect to the Transportation Infrastructure and the remedies being applied in the USA.