TRAFFIC GROWTH RATE ESTIMATION USING TRANSPORT DEMAND ELASTICITY METHOD: A CASE STUDY FOR NATIONAL

With the recent thrust on improving and developing highways for boosting National Economy, the importance of Traffic Demand Forecasting (TDF) has increased significantly as the forecasted traffic volume contributes substantially in engineering design, economic and financial liabilities of highway improvement projects. Therefore, estimation of traffic growth rates and the related issues concerned primarily to improve the rationality of traffic forecast is of prime importance. In the present Paper, the complete process of Traffic Growth Estimation by Transport Demand Elasticity Method even when available data is inaccurate or even missing, merits and demerits of various methods of obtaining traffic growth factors and critical issues associated in the process have been addressed and demonstrated through a case study. It has been revealed that with the constraints of availability of proper data and fluctuation of developing economy, the task of Traffic Growth Estimation could be quite subjective and approximate. Different approaches and necessary considerations for improving the rationality of traffic growth rate have also been addressed in the paper