Assessment on the Performance of Bus Station and Identification of the Cause of Traffic Congestion in Harar City Bus Station.

Abstract

As the increasing number of Vehicles and Passenger users, the traffic Congestions becomes common problem in the developing countries. In Ethiopia, traffic congestion is becoming a new phenomenon on the transportation infrastructures. The bus station is one of the most important transportation infrastructures where a bus stops to pick up and drop off passengers. In Harar city, there is only one bus station which serviced for Local and Long distance bus. Due to different causes, traffic congestion is becoming a more serious problem in the Bus station. The objective of this research is to assess the Performance of bus station and to identify the cause of traffic congestion in Harar City Bus Station. In order to achieve the objective of this research, the necessary data were collected through the field visual inspection, field measurements and traffic data video recording. Typical data required for this were processed and analyzed based on empirical calculation of HCM, GIS, Microsoft Excel and SPSS software. The results of the research displayed that unadjusted and adjusted capacity value of the bus station was 204 and 167 respectively. The cause of traffic congestion in Harar city Bus station is formed by increasing the number of passenger and buses, insufficient capacity in loading area, mixed traffic system, lack of good schedule, unbalance the number of arrival and departure busses and also, the main cause of traffic congestion in bus station is formed by local busses in the morning and long distance busses in the afternoon. So, to minimize traffic congested in the bus station this study was recommended that the Harar City Municipality would have to determine the required number of loading area and Prepare billboard schedule for local and long distance buses and also, the future work would have to be required to prepare manual for Bus Station