Analysis of traffic patterns between Karkh and Rusafa

¹ Civil Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Nahrain University, Baghdad, Iraq
² Highway and Transportation Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq

^* Corresponding author: noor_moutaz@uomustansiriyah.edu.iq

Abstract

Rapid and radical changes in urban activities lead to changes in spatial travel patterns. Recently, users of the road network in Baghdad have faced difficulty in mobility between Karkh and Rusafa due to the congestion of bridges connecting the east of the city to the west across the Tigris River during peak hours. Accordingly, this study aims to evaluate the operational conditions of bridges during the morning and afternoon peak hours by calculating V/C to measure the level of service with the possibility of analyzing the improvement of the impact on accessibility between Karkh and Rusafa areas by adding two new bridges on the Tigris River using GIS software to find the best path with the shortest travel time between the start and end points of the O-D trip through the software algorithm. A traffic survey of Baghdad bridges was conducted over two periods to analyze the flow patterns. Then, the Baghdad road network with its bridges was drawn using ArcGIS software, and their properties were entered. The analysis results showed that most of the bridges operate at the service level F, which indicates that the value of (v/c) is greater than one. The highest average travel time savings upon completion of the two bridges will be for the areas south of Baghdad (5-9) minutes.