Better Assessment of Traffic Jams

Paper about practical instruments for reducing excessive traffic congestion

  • News 16.11.2018

Traffic congestion is a growing problem in many cities around the world due to increasing urbanisation and the associated increase in traffic volumes. The focus of a traditional understanding of congestion is usually on motorised traffic. For this reason, measures to reduce traffic density continue to concentrate on creating more space for cars. This increased road space, however, induces more cars on the roads and leads to an even more dramatic level of congestion after capacity expansion.

Dr.-Ing. Frederic Rudolph, Project Co-ordinator in the Energy, Transport and Climate Policy Division at the Wuppertal Institute, and Tamás Mátrai, PhD student at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, have investigated the current understanding of congestion from different disciplines and argue for a multimodal perspective. 

The paper "Congestion from a Multimodal Perspective" investigates the multimodal nature of urban congestion and network performance, with the aim of developing practice ready policy tools to alleviate the adverse effects of excess demand, no matter in which mode it realises. As part of the efforts to get an overall understanding of how congestion is denied in various disciplines, the authors conduct a literature review of relevant engineering and microeconomics studies. The investigation reveals the main areas where contradiction can be identified between engineering and economics approaches. In a second step, they investigate the results of an expert survey about the principles of congestion analysis from a multimodal perspective. 

The main contribution of the paper is twofold: First, the authors draw attention to the pitfalls of oversimplified and narrow viewpoints on congestion. Second, they operationalise these principles in order to enable decision makers to assess the impact of urban transport measures on congestion.

The complete article can be read under the link below.


Cookie Settings

Cookies help us to constantly improve the website for you. By clicking on the "Allow cookies" button, you agree to the use of cookies. For further information on the use of cookies or to change your settings, please click on More about the use and rejection of cookies.