THE BENEFITS OF GOOD TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IN A SEMI-CHAOTIC CITY

The main objective of the paper is to describe a design and socio-economic evaluation study of several traffic management measures applied to two important arterial roads in Santiago, Chile, and to discuss its results in the context of transport engineering and planning in developing countries. The measures considered were: modification of junction layout, changes in the arterial width, re-routeing of traffic, turn prohibition, street closures, bus lanes and other bus priority measures, and traffic signal coordination. The following computer programs were used in the study: TRAFFICQ, TRANSYT, SIGCAP, and SIGSET. The paper presents the results of the exercise; they basically show that, in the case of a developing country with different traffic composition, driving behaviour, etc., from those of an industrialised nation, the implementation of traffic management schemes can produce extremely high social rates of return, even when considering extremely low values of time. The paper concludes by proposing a simplified methodology using the computer programs mentioned above. For the covering abstract of the seminar see IRRD 283718. (TRRL)