Developing spatial decision support system to assess traffic congestion in the city of johannesburg

Abstract

African cities are rapidly experiencing an increase in population, thereby making it difficult to attain self-sustainability. Traffic congestion is a major contributing factor to this issue. Johannesburg's inner-city fits this profile, with an increasing decline in economic and social activities, and quality of life due to traffic congestion. Furthermore, the lack of a road transport infrastructure geodatabase and traffic data in these cities makes it more difficult for stakeholders to make an informed decision on how to effectively manage roads prone to traffic congestion or due for infrastructure upgrade. This paper focuses on developing a geodatabase using factors that cause traffic congestion such as bus stops, traffic lights, speed humps, t-joints, cross joints, street parking, and others. These factors were investigated on some selected roads within the Johannesburg inner-city by enumerating the number of such factors existing on each road with the aid of high-resolution aerial imagery. The developed geodatabase becomes a tool that can support the decision-making process in solving traffic congestion by querying the geodatabase to select roads that are prone to traffic congestions depending on the number of factors occurring along a road.