| dc.description.abstract | The increase in private traffic demand coupled with a number of issues such as reduced utilization of high occupancy vehicles, lack of capacity of public modes of transportation, inefficient road capacity leads to highly congested roads in Colombo city. Traffic control infrastructure has led to a degradation in the speed of vehicles on the roads of Colombo city resulting in higher operating costs for vehicles and greater congestion and pollution throughout the city. This study intended to suggest proposals to reduce the traffic congestion on Galle road by introducing designing and planning strategies ensuring optimum utilization of Marine Drive. Level of Service (LOS) estimations on Galle Road and Marine Drive clearly indicated that the traffic condition in Galle Road in the section from Dehiwala to Wellawatte, was very poor during peak times. It can be seen that traffic control measures that have already been undertaken, have not answered this traffic congestion problem completely. Even though Marine Drive has been introduced as a solution for this traffic congestion, which has resulted in reducing traffic, should be optimized to take maximum advantage of it. Field observations and Level of Service estimations indicated that the level of utilization of Marine Drive to avoid traffic, was poor. In this case, three proposals have been introduced by this study which are, structural design of Marine Drive extension from Wellawatte to Dehiwala, bus route plan accompanied with re- routing of long distance bus services and intersection plan for Dehiwala junction. Findings and proposals of this project will be helpful to minimize traffic congestion in Galle Road during peak times, at the same time reducing the negative social, economic and environmental impacts. | en_US |
