Cambridge IGCSECambridge International O Levels

Traffic Count Geography

A traffic count is a count of vehicular or pedestrian traffic, which is conducted along a particular road, path, or intersection. A traffic count is commonly undertaken either automatically........
Traffic Count Geography

Traffic count; is the count of vehicles  which is conducted  along a particular road, path  or intersection.

Importance of traffic count

  • To establish relative importance of any route or road facility.
  • To decide the priority for improvement and expansion of a road and to allot the funds accordingly.
  • To plan and design the existing and new facilities of traffic operations on the road.
  • To make analysis of traffic pattern and trends on the road.
  • To plan one-way street and other regulatory measures by volume distribution study.
  • To do design of road intersections, planning signal timings and channelisation by turning movement study.
  • To do planning of side walks, cross walks and pedestrian signals by pedestrian volume study.
  • To do economic studies after estimating the highway user’s revenue
  • To know the variation in land use for different activities ( e.g.  Shops , Education, entertainment, offices e.tc.)
Traffic Count Geography
Traffic Count Geography
Traffic Count Geography

Things the students would need to do to plan for their traffic count

  • Where / which roads to do the survey.
  • Location of survey points / safe place / away from traffic lights.
  • Measure distance from town centre.
  • Which day / when to do the survey.
  • What time(s) to do the survey.
  • How long to record / count.
  • How many surveys to do in one day
  • How to organise themselves – e.g. one student on each side of the road / number of students in each group / assigning students to sites
  • What equipment they would need – stopwatch, counters, clipboard, paper for recording
  • Classification of traffic / what is traffic
  • How to count and record / tally method
  • Prepare tally chart

Reasons why tally method  is suitable recording method

  1. Easy / quick method to do
  2. Allows accurate totaling after

Difficulties  when doing traffic survey

  • Being unable to count accurately at busy times/lots of traffic/traffic going too fast/too many lanes to count.
  • Students losing concentration / bored / no break
  • Breathing difficulties / breathing exhaust fumes
  • Timings is hard to synchronise
  • Specific weather difficulty – e.g. rain ruins paper / sunstroke
  • Keep returning to do count / meet at different times

Traffic count question

A group of students was studying traffic flows in and out of the centre of a town.

 A map of the area being studied is shown in Fig, below.

Number of vehicles at each site

Traffic Count Geography

The students wanted to investigate the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: The amount of traffic will be less further from the town centre.

Hypothesis 2: The amount of traffic going towards and going away from the town centre will change during the day.

Traffic Count Geography

What would be the students’ conclusion about

Hypothesis 1: The amount of traffic will be less further from the town centre?

Answer for hypothesis 1

Hypothesis 1 is incorrect / false

No clear pattern on the four roads

Two roads show less traffic further away from centre / Queens Rd. / Robertson Dr.

Two roads show more traffic further away from centre / Wellington Dr. / Cambridge Rd.

But difference in amount of traffic variation is small on all roads

To investigate Hypothesis 2: The amount of traffic going towards and going away

from the town centre will change during the day

Answer for hypothesis 2

Hypothesis 2 is correct / the amount of traffic going towards and going away from the town centre will change

More traffic  going towards centre at 08.00 / morning

More traffic  going away from centre at 17.00 / evening

Each road has the same pattern of movement

Ways to reduce traffic congestion in urban areas

Widen roads/more lanes/more roads/better roads

By-pass/ring road/underpass/flyover/bridge/tunnel/elevated road

Park and ride

Bus lanes/bike lanes

Car sharing

More public transport or example

Parking restrictions/more parking spaces

One way streets

Restrict traffic to certain days

Congestion charge

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