Area traffic capacity in centeral areas – Alexandria city center as a case study

In many cities, worldwide, city centers are highly congested. The reason is that the Area Traffic Capacity (ATC) becomes constrained; i.e. the traffic and parking demands (mainly motorized), continually, increase within a finite roads’ and car parks’ capacity. The central Area Traffic Capacity (ATC) could be either the capacity of the internal road network, the parking capacity, or the capacity of the approach roads leading into the area. One of these three elements limits the overall traffic capacity. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to develop a planning process which can be used as a tool for determining the ATC, and producing and evaluating different solutions (or scenarios) that can improve a central area traffic capacity. The proposed planning process is based on a combined analysis of traffic and parking situations which result from the travel demand and the traffic supply in a city center. If the travel demand is greater than the area traffic capacity, the process reflects feedback effects of parking and traffic situations on the desired supply or demand. Thus, it can be used to analyze different possible improving strategies, which might be needed to achieve favorable situations (formulating scenarios). The proposed planning process is then applied to estimate the area traffic capacity of Alexandria city center and to analyze the impacts of applying some traffic strategies in order to improve the ATC.