The Impact of Congestion Charging Technique on Traffic Flow and Atmospheric Pollution in Kuwait City

Abstract

Traffic congestion is a major problem in high populated cities, due to the frequent increase on travel demand and exponential vehicles growth. Resulting in increased vehicle queuing and slows road speed which can led to increase delays, air pollution, and fuel consumption. Poor traffic management in the congested spot result in elongated traffic jam. Therefore, this study aims to reduce traffic congestion by applying congestion charging system which is an effective method to regulate demand without increasing supply. Kuwait City network was selected to perform the system. Kuwait City is a vital city that has a lot of governmental and commercial facilities which make the city crowded especially during the peak hours. The current condition was analyzed in SYNCHRO simulation software in order to compare it with the improved condition to confirm the applicability. The genetic algorithm will be used as a practical method to apply congestion pricing in order to provide optimized solutions that will be analyzed in SYNCHRO software to examine the performance of the network. The impacts of applying congestion pricing system were remarkable. From traffic point of view, the demand was regulated, also total delays and fuel consumption were improved. The reduction of total delay is ranged between 24.4% to 40.58%, and the reduction of fuel used is ranged between 36.76% to 60.89%. From an economical point of view, the user cost decreased in a range between 27.77% and 43.75%. In addition, from an environmental aspect the emissions of HC, CO and NOx improved significantly which improved air quality.