PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY IN CIVIL ENGINEERING (ROAD AND TRANSPORT ENGINEERING)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The relationship between geometric design elements and accident rates is complex and not fully understood. Relatively little information is available on relationships between geometric design elements and accident rates. Intersections are usually considered as the critical points within the urban road network and the evaluation of their performance provides valuable understanding and useful indication about the performance of the city road network system. The existing roads design does not provide adequate facilities for pedestrians and hence, there exists a constant conflict between the pedestrians and the vehicles in sharing the limited space available on a road. At intersections, pedestrian crossing behavior is even more complex since the vehicles have very little response time to control the vehicles, particularly in urban areas. All these issues are pointing towards the research work required for studying the road crossing behavior of vehicles and pedestrians at urban intersections. Pedestrian is one of the important component in urban transportation system and also vulnerable at locations under mixed traffic conditions. At intersection, some of the vehicles may yield to pedestrians who are already at crosswalk location. However, some of the pedestrians are using forced gaps to cross the road. Hence, while pedestrians use the un-signalized intersection crosswalk with forced gaps, which decreases the vehicular flow characteristics. The pedestrian sidewalks do not show a direct effect on the vehicular flow characteristics when the pedestrian have pleasant walking facilities. The present study has analyzed the effect of pedestrian crossing on the characteristics of vehicular flow at un-signalized intersection under mixed traffic conditions. The result of this study indicates that the studied intersections Agep, Fikre café, Left side of St. marry church, Bank of Commercial and Agricultural College in the Sodo city currently serving in poor condition of facility. Thus, after carrying out additional detail investigation and taking into consideration future traffic growth appropriate improvement