Selecting the Best Ring Road Around Hilla City to Improve Traffic Operation

Abstract Hilla city, located in Babil Governorate, suffers from high traffic congestion, because it lacks ring roads to solve the problem of internal traffic congestion. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of ring roads in helping to solve traffic congestion. Three ring roads were proposed for the city and the changes in traffic performance are discussed. Each of these proposed ring roads will connect external roads connected to “60th Street” (the artery of Hilla city) with each other outside the city. Through the economic evaluation that was conducted, it became clear that the best proposed route that can be chosen is proposal No. 2, as it is the most economical among the proposed rings; its total cost amounted to approximately 90.5 billion Iraqi dinars. In order to investigate the impact of the proposed ring roads on the traffic level of service and access time, the Vissim program was used. It has been shown that adding a ring road to the city will contribute to reducing internal congestion by approximately 24%. It is also noticed that the level of service for 60th Street has improved from Level (F) to Level (C). Finally, future traffic volumes were calculated and analyzed for the year 2030. It was found that the level of service has worsened by one level; it has shifted from level of service (C) to (D) for 60th Street.