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Traffic Congestion Problem and Solutions, the Road between Sawz Square and
Shahidan Square in Koya City as a Case Study

Conference Paper · December 2013

DOI: 10.2495/ISUD130151

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Traffic Congestion Problem and Solutions, the
Road between Sawz Square and Shahidan
Square at Koya City as a Case Study
P. J. Muhammad Ali1 & R. H. Faraj1
1
Koya University, Iraq.

Abstract
One of the big problems facing city municipalities is the traffic congestion. It
makes life in cities uncomfortable for peoples. Every year governments spend
huge budgets to solve this problem. Koya is suffering from this problem
especially at rush traffic hours. In this paper the traffic congestion problem is
studied for the road connecting the Sawz square and Shahidan square at Koya
city. The congestion is measured by determining the level of service of the street
(LOS) through calculating the traffic flow rate of the street and free flow rate, the
LOS level was D. For determining peak hour traffic volume is calculated
through manual counting of vehicles and multiplying by passenger car
equivalent (PCE) where the speed is reduced to (10 km/hr). Also the topography,
elevations and alignments of the road are studied. This paper determined the real
causes of the traffic congestion at this specific street in Koya city and proposed
solutions for solving the problem.
Keywords: traffic congestion, peak hour traffic, traffic jam, urbanization.

1 Introduction
One of the most challenging and complicated issues in city life is the traffic
problem. In Iraq, development in the number of roads and transportation
infrastructure is not enough to fulfil the rapid increase in the number of vehicles.
Opening boarders for importing vehicles without any kind of planning makes
Iraq especially Kurdistan region a big garage for vehicles. The absence of active
public transportation is also one of the causes of congestion problem. The
reasons causing traffic congestion is not generic, it may differ from a road to
another, there may be common causes but still roads have their specific reasons
for congestion. The increase in population and high income of individuals in any
country has its effects on the existing transportation systems. This study will
concentrate on the causes of the traffic congestion on a specific road in Koya city
as well as the solutions to avoid traffic congestion.
Koya is one of the cities of the Kurdistan region. The main road connecting
two major cities of Kurdistan, Sulaimanya and Erbil is going through this city
and exactly through this street, fig. 1 is a satellite image shows the strategic
location of the city. The increase in the individuals’ income pushed people to
buy passenger cars. The development in road infrastructure in the city is not
adequate to accompany the high number of vehicles in the city. Since the end of
80s, there is no noticeable infrastructure development in the city especially in the
downtown roads. The city grew randomly without planning and new quarters
were built with a little planning while city development needs a deep plan.
The congestion problem is a common problem among developed and
underdeveloped countries, so, it’s a global problem [1]. The traffic congestion
leads to other kinds of problems especially in big cities, according to a study
conducted in cities of Sweden the traffic jam caused a noise pollution too [2].
Other studies showed that development in any county in the world is not perfect
if traffic congestion results big economic costs [3]. Traffic congestion is easily
causing traffic jams. a traffic jam occurs when vehicles are fully stopped for a
long period of time [4].
The objective of this study is to find the real causes behind the traffic
congestion on the street connecting two major squares Sawz and Shahidan
square at Koya city and to conclude possible solutions for the problem.

Figure 1: Koya city located at the south east of Erbil

2 Area under consideration
The study area is a road (300 m) length connects two major squares in the Koya
city, the Sawz square and the Shahidan square, fig. 2 shows a satellite image of
the street. The average width of the road is 25 m. According to the regulations of
the traffic management system the way is bidirectional, two lanes in each
direction. This street is one of the most important roads in the city which located
on the main road connecting two big cities Sulaimanya and Erbil in the
Kurdistan region. Also, it’s the main road to the Koya University and other
important governmental offices. There are a number of shops in the south side of
the road while most of the buildings on the north side are governmental and
public. The price of one square meter of a land surrounding the area of the study
is relatively higher than other places of the city. Both squares are signalized and
controlled by traffic lights, but continuous interruption of the electrical power
supplying traffic lights is another cause of the congestion.

Figure 2: The area under consideration

3 Methodology
Two stations where fixed for determining flow rate by manual counting of
vehicles passing these stations in an hour. The first station was located 70 m
from point A, the second one is positioned about 70 m from point B. Traffic flow
rate in the B-A direction was the same in the two stations while there was a
difference in the flow rate for the A-B direction, this difference caused by the
Jalizada sub-road which comes from south and joins the road under study as in
the fig. 3.
 Figure 3: Jalizada sub-road flows in the street under consideration

3.1 Travel speed

For determining the average speed of the vehicles the License Plate method is
used, the observers were positioned in the two stations. In this method the
observer is required to take the last four digits of some of the vehicles passing
the road at the first station, as well as the time of passing this station is also
recorded. The time of arrival to the second station is also recorded with the last
four digits of the vehicle. It’s not possible to do this process for all vehicles, only
some vehicles can be recorded in both stations. The difference between two
recorded times is the travel time of this vehicle. The average of travel time can
be calculated as a mean of observed travel time of all vehicles, eqn. (1) can be
used for determining the average travel speed.

 ∗  ∗ 3.6

= (1)
∑  

Where: S is the average travel speed in (kph), n is number of matched plates,

L is the length of the test section (m), in this case L= 160 m, t is the recorded
time in (sec.).

3.2 Travel volume

The rate of flow is measured throughout one week to take in consideration all
different days of the week including the weekend from 06:00 to 23:00. Late
night hours were neglected because traffic flow is reduced too much. The
counting intervals were 15 minutes. fig. 4 shows a sample of the sheets used in
the counting process.
Figure 4: Sample of the sheets used in the process of determining traffic volume

The flow diagram in the direction A-B is shown in the fig. 5, the flow
diagram in the direction B-A is shown in the fig. 6. Because of the differences in
the rate of flow between two stations in the A-B direction the average of the two
stations is calculated and used in the flow diagram of fig. 5.
Every day two peak hours occur one at 8:00 and the second one at 18:00, also
there is another little peak occurs at 12:00, but it’s not high to be considered as a
rush hour. The noticeable thing here is that, peak hours occur at the same time in
both directions. The first rush hour is occurring at the beginning of the working
day which is normal in all countries though out the world. The second rush hour
occurs on evenings when peoples going back to their homes. Another cause of
the evening rush hour is a parallel parking, because of clinics working time.

Figure 5: Traffic flow rate in the direction A-B

 Figure 6: Traffic flow rate in the direction B-A

3.3 Passenger car equivalent

Passenger Car Equivalent (PCE) is a metric used to assess traffic-flow rate on

highways. A Passenger Car Equivalent is the impact that a mode of transport has
on traffic variables such as speed or volume of traffic if compared to a single car.
The equivalent values for each kind of vehicles are shown in table 1.

Table 1: Passenger car equivalent

Passenger car (including private cars, taxi, and pickups) 1

Bus, tractor, truck 3.5
Motorcycle 0.5
Bicycle 0.2
Horse-drawn vehicles 4

In this study, most of the vehicles were private cars, taxies, pickups, buses,
and tractors. Some Motorcycles were also recorded. Bicycles were not recorded
because of their little effect and horse-drawn vehicles did not exist. Observers
directly multiplied the number of vehicles by their equivalent values to get the
PCE/ 15 mints, and then PCE/ h.

3.4 Free flow speed

Free flow Speed (FFS) is the average speed of a vehicle in a specific road, it
must be observed during very low traffic volume conditions or late night hours
while drivers are not constrained by other vehicles or by traffic signals, FFS is
measured using test car.
In this study, the FFS is obtained by marking runs with a test car during
periods of late night hours. The FFS can be determined as the average of several
speed reading of the car in different five nights according to the eqn. (2).


= ∑   ⁄ (2)
Where: FFS is the free flow speed (Kph), n is number of samples in this case is
5, and s is the vehicle speed reading in each time (Kph), In this study, the FFS
was (45 Kph).

4 Level of service
Level of service (LOS) is a measure used to determine the effectiveness of
elements of transportation infrastructure. LOS is most commonly used to analyse
highways by categorizing traffic flow with corresponding safe driving
conditions. According to Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) and AASHTO
Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, the levels of service for any
highway or street is ranked using letters A through F, with A being the best and
F being the worst.
The LOS can be determined based on FFS and average travel speed [5], table
2 shows the level of service for roads classified according to the FFS and
average travel speeds.

Table 2: Level of service (LOS) according to free flow traffic

Street class I II III IV

FFS 89 to 72 kph 72 to 56 kph 56 to 48 kph 56 to 40 kph
Typical FFS 80 kph 64 kph 56 kph 48 kph
LOS Average travel speed (kph)
A ˃ 68 ˃ 56 ˃ 48 ˃ 40
B ˃ 55-68 ˃ 45-56 ˃ 39-48 ˃ 31-40
C ˃ 43-55 ˃ 35-45 ˃ 29-39 ˃ 21-31
D ˃ 34-43 ˃ 27-35 ˃ 23-29 ˃ 14-21
E ˃ 26-34 ˃ 21-27 ˃ 16-23 ˃ 11-14
F ≤ 26 ≤ 21 ≤ 16 ≤ 11

The street is class IV because the FFS of the street is 45 kph, the average
vehicle speed is 15 kph therefore the LOS of the street is D. Level of service D is
not a good level, this paper suggests solutions to increase this level to A or B
level.

5 Reasons of traffic congestion

This research tries to focus on the real causes of the congestion in peak hours.
Traffic congestion is a local problem not generic the reasons differ from a case to
another and is directly related to the road under study. The causes may vary from
place to another even in the same city or the same country, therefore, not all the
reasons and solutions can be generalized. In fact, all causes of the traffic
congestion mentioned below affect each other. Causes are:
• Parallel parking
Parallel parking is parking the vehicle beside the road in the direction of flow. In
the study area the parking is allowed in the A-B direction, but not allowed in the
B-A direction. It’s noticeable that parallel parking effectively affects the flow of
the traffic, especially at rush hours where vehicle parks illegally as a second
parallel row and leads to a decrease in the number of lanes to only one lane.
• Number of vehicles
Generally, the number of cars in the Kurdistan region is relatively high if
compared with the capacity of roads, this number is in a continuous increase
while there is not adequate level of development in the number of road and
traffic infrastructure. In Koya, number of vehicles is in a fast increase and roads
are in a bad quality.
• Width of the street
Streets width is not constant, it varies along the road. The width of the street in
the narrowest section is 23 m, and in the widest section is 27m.
• School, clinics, offices
There are a number of clinics, offices, a school, governmental and public
buildings and a bank on the street, they have an effect on the traffic flow in the
peak hours.
• City planning
New quarters in the city was built without planning. New quarters are just
appended to old quarters without constructing roads serves these new areas. New
quarters depend totally on the roads of older quarters. Because of this reason
there is a heavy traffic on this road. It can be said that Koya is a random built
city, there is no serious city planning.

6 Proposed solutions
Traffic congestion can be reduced by either reducing traffic flow or increasing
road capacity [4]. Because reasons of this kind of problem are local not generic,
therefore, solutions are also specific to this case only and it can’t be applied to
other cases in different cities, below are the solutions proposed by this paper:
• Road widening
The first solution clicks in the mind is the possibility of widening the road. The
north side of the street is %90 governmental and public estates that can be
widened easily with a relatively little budget.
• Constructing highway
The main traffic between two big cities Erbil and Sulaimanya is going through
this road. Constructing a highway outside city centre will effectively reduce the
traffic load on the study area.
• Building tunnel
The street ends with two low elevation roads as shown in the fig. 7, the
difference in elevation between point A which is the Sawz square and the point E
is 7.5m, while the difference between point B which is the Shahidan square and
the point D which is the Azady Bridge is about 9.0m. This difference in
elevation tells us that the street was built on a hill which makes it perfect
topology for building a tunnel under the road. Building a tunnel with a length
about 330m provides the city a kind of urban style.

Figure 7: The alignment and elevations of the street under consideration

• Controlling number vehicles

Controlling number of the cars imported to the region has a positive effect on
controlling congestion problems in all cities in the region.
• Combined solution
The first three proposed solutions above can be combined with each other to give
better results.

7 Conclusions
This paper concluded that there is a traffic congestion problem at the street
between Sawz intersection and Shahidan square in Koya city with high
expectation to increase in future. The level of service of the street is D. Widening
the road is the best solution for deceasing the congestion, because it raises the
LOS to level B with a low cost if compared with other suggestions. Building a
tunnel gives the city a kind of urbanized look, but with higher costs.

References
[1] Najneen, F., Hoque, K.S., Mahmood, S.M.S., Rahman, S. & Sharmin, M.
Traffic congestion due to unplanned activities. Bangladesh research
publications Journal, 4(2), pp. 185-197, 2010.
[2] Bjork, J., Ardo, J., Stroh, E., Lovkvist, E., Ostergren, P. & Albin, M., Road
traffic noise in southern Sweden and its relation to annoyance, disturbance of
daily activities and health. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment, and
Health, 32(5), pp. 392-401, 2006.
[3] Chien, M.K. & Shih, L.H., An empirical study of the implementation of green
supply chain management practices in the electrical and electronic industry
and their relation to organizational performances. International Journal of
Environmental Science and Technology, 4(3), pp. 383 –394, 2007.
[4] Remi, A.J., Adegoke, A.A.I., Oyerinde, A.J, A Study of the Causes, Effects
and ameliorative Measures of Road Traffic Congestion in Lagos Metropolis.
European journal of Social Sciences, 11(1), pp. 119-128, 2009.
 [5] Transportation research board, Highway capacity manual 2000, National
Academy of Sciences, p.10-7 , 2000.

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