The Effect of One-Way Urban Street on Traffic Operation Performance

Traffic congestion has become a serious problem affecting citizens' daily life. Many adopted strategies are studied and applied to alleviate this problem and reduce traffic pressure on street networks. Some are costly, and others are unsuccessful in solving the problem due to higher demand. The one-way traffic movement with circulation modification is adopted in this work which promotes the capacity of streets to sustain higher demand. The study area is identified with the most congested signalized intersection (Al-Nakhala, Al-Sakhara, and Beirut) along the urban corridor. The obtained results suggest using one-way traffic movement with a circulation network that significantly improves traffic operation and reduces congestion to a great extent. Control delays of selected signalized intersections are reduced from about 95%, and v/c is reduced to 0.69 (Al-Nakhala), 0.59 (Al-Sakhara), and 0.99 (Beirut) intersections. The results of modified traffic movement show excessive delays are not experienced, and the traffic movement modification ensures the sufficiency of the signalized corridor to accommodate the traffic demand. The traffic one-way movement can solve the problem of traffic congestion in the study area and improve the level of service from (F) to (A) and (B)