Name: LIEW KOK KEI (111458) EAL 335 TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING

Question: What is your ultimate choice in terms of the most serious problem associated
with transport.
If you had changed your mind, indicate it in your report.
Give your justifications why you chose the most serious problem.

Answer to question:

Developed cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Bandar Melaka are those areas having high
level of accumulation and concentration of business activities and are owning
complicated spatial structures that are generally supported by transport systems and its
network. The larger the city, the greater is its complexity and the potential for disruptions
of transport systems, in the sense that traffic and transport systems are not well-managed.

The most important transport problems are often related to urban areas and take place
when transport systems, for a variety of reasons, cannot satisfy the numerous
requirements. In more specific engineering terms, traffic flow and mobility shall be
utilized to describe critical situations happened cities.

Urban productivity is highly dependent on the effectiveness of the transport systems to
favors tasks for instance moving labor, consumers and freight between destinations. In
addition, the important transport terminals such as ports and airports are located within
urban areas such as Penang, contributing to a specific array of problems. Some problems
are ancient, like congestion, while this problem is still associated with countries of high
traffic density with low traffic flow rate.

Congestion is a phenomenon occurs when transport demand exceeds its supply at a
specific point in time and in a specific section of the transport system. Under such
circumstances, each vehicle impairs the mobility of others. Congestion is often caused by
few factors that are avoidable and non-avoidable such as weather, work zones (road
maintenance and construction), traffic incidents and etc.. Road works, road construction
and road maintenance, are one of the influential elements contributing to unnecessary
traffic congestion.

Traffic congestion due to road maintenance or construction works are often caused by
the poor traffic management by the road authorities such as PWD (Public Works
Department or often refer as JKR) while undergoing road works. With the poor traffic
management or planning, the flow of the traffic, which is the number of passengers
carried to destinations per hour, becomes lower than the expected figures. Proper traffic
management during road works should be conducted such that road works should not be
carried out during the peak seasons and peak hour as what is shown in the Figure 1.
Name: LIEW KOK KEI (111458) EAL 335 TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING

Figure 1 represents a typical daily urban traffic profile with two peak hours, morning
and afternoon, which are recurring on a regular basis (on weekdays).


Figure 2: (Source: ECMT (2007) Managing Urban Traffic Congestion, ISBN 978-92-
821-0128-5.) Major Sources of Recurring and Non-Recurring Congestion in the United
States

Instead, having high level of congestion and low value traffic flow rate due to road
works might most probably result in disturbance to the nearby neighbors and finalized
with countable number of complaints. Furthermore, unwanted congestion will also bring
problems to environment that can be expressed in sound pollution and air pollution by the
exhausted toxic gases from vehicles.

In short, congestion that is caused by road works such as road maintenance and
construction would result in negative effects on the mobility and the environmental
problems to the traffic systems particularly in developed cities.

(Source: The Geography of Transport System by Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue)

THE END OF REPORT