Greater Cairo Traffic Congestion: Resolution Policies

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Roads, Transport and Traffic Research Council - Academy of Scientific Research and Technology - Arab Republic of Egypt

2 Roads, Transport and Traffic Research Council - Academy of Scientific Research and Technology - Arab Republic of Egypt.

Abstract

Traffic congestion represents a major challenge for those responsible for the country's transportation system, as traffic congestion causes serious negative impacts on the national economy in addition to the social and environmental impact. This makes reducing this phenomenon to be the main responsibility undertaken by the agencies and departments concerned with traffic movement. Believing in the importance of this issue, this research was prepared aiming at investigating the causes and potential solutions of traffic congestion in Greater Cairo City through the analysis of adult road users’ opinions to reach applicable solutions. A questionnaire comprising five main sections was prepared for this purpose. The responses of 307 completed questionnaires were analyzed. The sample represents well the different road users’ categories in terms of age, gender, level of education, experience with roads, and used transportation modes, which achieves a confidence level of 95% and an error of 5.6%, which are statistically acceptable. The analysis showed a strong correlation between the road users' opinions and experiences of transportation and traffic engineers regarding this phenomenon. The study identified the most congested corridors and intersections where the non-signalized intersections and poor planning of U-turn slots are the top places of traffic congestion. The road users’ behavior and culture came at the top of the traffic congestion causes with a percentage of 24%, followed by the engineering and traffic management reasons with 20% each, then the reasons related to public transportation and legislation, and then the reasons related to pedestrian and bicycles paths. Finally, the study presented a set of resolution policies and referred to the agencies responsible for executing these solutions as the traffic congestion problem is a societal problem whose solutions involve many parties, reaching 12 different government agencies. This highlights the necessity to establish an entity at the institutional level comprising representatives of concerned parties, experts, and academics to work according to a national strategy with clear goals and features to continuously apply these policies and measure traffic congestion levels to track the progress. The recommendations also indicated the necessity of expanding such studies using questionnaires and facilitating the traffic data collection.

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