The lack of efficient application of transportation planning process in developing cities, such as Gaza, leads to deficiency in adopting the suitable transport policies to mitigate the transportation problems resulting from urbanization and rapid increase of population. The mode choice model is probably the most important element in transportation planning and policy making. The aim of this study is to develop mode choice model for work trips in Gaza city and therefore investigating the factors that affect the employed people's choice for transport modes. The model was developed using about two thirds of 552 questionnaires distributed for this purpose. The rest remaining third of questionnaires were used to validate the chosen models. The results of this research show that the factors that significantly affect the choice of transport modes are: total travel time, total cost divided by personal income, ownership of means of transport, distance, age, and average family monthly income. The developed model is able to predict the choice behavior of employed people in Gaza city as it is valid at 95% confidence level. This study can be used by transportation planners to predict the employed people's behavior and travel demand analysis. The developed model can be used for predicting the future modal split by inputting predicted future value of exploratory variables.
In the early nineties of the last century, the transportation system in Gaza Strip was born and new infrastructure projects, especially road networks, were constructed. However, the construction lacked efficient application of a transportation planning process. Transportation planning relies on traffic demand forecasting process. The conventional process is impeded by extensive amount of socioeconomic data. One of the most widely-used models which mitigate this problem is the TransCAD Model. This model is rarely used in Gaza Strip for traffic demand forecasting, and most of the practices depend mainly on a constant growth rate of traffic. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to apply this model in Gaza City for traffic estimation. This model estimates the origin-destination matrix based on traffic count. The traffic count was carried out at 36 intersections distributed around Gaza City. The results of traffic flow estimation obtained from TransCAD are assigned to the Gaza maps using the GIS techniques for spatial analysis. It is shown that the most congested area at present is the middle of the city especially at Aljala-Omer Almokhtar intersection. Therefore, improvement scenarios of this area should be carried out. The results of calibration of traffic flow estimation show that the differences between the estimated and the actual flows were less than 10%. In addition, network evaluation results show that the network is expected to be more congested in 2015. This work can be used by transportation planners for testing any network improvement scenarios and for studying their network performance.
Transportation consumes for about 27% of total energy. Almost 100% of the energy used for propelling transport vehicles is derived from petroleum resources. In Gaza Strip and West Bank, transportation consumes about 60% of the total amount of imported fuel. The traffic congestion has a negative impact significantly on the environment because of the increased amount of fuel consumption and thus emissions of pollutants from vehicles. Serious traffic congestion is concentrated in the middle part of Gaza City, especially in major arterial roads such as Eljalaa Road. The congestion comes into view clearly in the segment of the street which consists of 5 consecutive signalized intersections. What makes the congestion even worse is the non-efficient traffic signal control; where each intersection is treated in isolation. The key solution to reduce the congestion and to save energy is to use signal coordination. Therefore, this study aims to redesign and coordinate the traffic signals along Eljalaa road using TRANSYT-7F Model. It aims also to compare between the traffic performance and the fuel consumption of the coordinated signals and the existing uncoordinated ones. The analysis and design are based on geometric data and manual traffic count. The results of comparison show a remarkable improvement of the traffic performance and energy saving of the studied area. There was a reduction of travel time, delay, stops and fuel consumption by 44%, 56%, 25% and 31% respectively. The level of service has been improved from F to D. Thus, it is recommended that signal coordination should be carried out at all arterial roads in Gaza city.
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