Impact on Existing Transport Systems by Generated Traffic due to New Developments

Impact of future traffic generated due to a development activity was forecasted on available information at the time, for a proposed building complex in Colombo taking it as a study sample. Through this study a complete pre-assessment of ‘in-coming’ and ‘out-going’ vehicles which generates due to the proposed development was conducted before hand, and observed how it would affect the surrounding road network in future. Then it was also observed that, whether the impact was within, or outside the tolerable limits.

Once the proposed development was completed, and after few years of its operation, a validation was carried-out to assess the findings of the initial study which was conducted at the proposal stage of the development. The validation study results confirmed that the traffic generated due to the development was within tolerable limits of the surrounding road network as indicated in the initial study; hence the initial predictions were valid. Study also highlights the importance of development of local norms for traffic generating factors for different types of developments.