Evaluation and Prediction of Vehicular Flow in Port Harcourt

The growing number of vehicles, particularly those used for public transportation, is causing a drop in vehicle flow on the city's main roadways, resulting in a gradual increase in travel times. In Abuloma, Artillery, Borikiri, Choba, Iwofe, Mile 3 and Woji, as well as various intersections, bus stops, and overpasses, the average speed of all vehicle types was determined during the course of a 4-week study. This was accomplished by manually counting traffic at various road sections for 15 minutes, covering a distance of 0.035 km during peak hours, which are 7 am - 10 am and 3 pm - 6 pm. The aim of this research is to evaluate and predict the traffic flow of current performance of Ikwerre road. Vehicles’ flows at Abuloma, Artillery, Borikiri, Choba, Iwofe, Mile 3 Diobu and Woji are 9264veh/sec, 8540veh/sec, 7932veh/sec, 9068veh/sec, 10572veh/sec, 11416veh/sec and 8116veh/sec respectively. Traffic speeds at Abuloma, Artillery, Borikiri, Choba, Iwofe, Mile 3 Diobu and Woji are 49.03km/hr, 33.78km/hr, 3.98km/hr, 23.98km/hr, 35.10km/hr, 35.39km/hr and 27.21km/hr respectively. Woji recorded the lowest speed which implies that, drivers spend more time in congestion in that area of the state, and travel time is increased which negatively impacts businesses and more vehicle emissions as they spend longer time on the road. Abuloma on the other hand recorded the highest speed, the rest were relatively high apart from the Mile 1 axis which was similar to that of the Borikiri. Artillery had the least traffic congestion due to its relatively high speed, Abuloma, Woji, Choba, Borikiri, Mile 3 and Iwofe showed slightly lesser speeds. Traffic density at Abuloma, Artillery, Borikiri, Choba, Iwofe, Mile 3 Diobu and Woji are 66171.43veh/km, 61000veh/km, 56657.14, 64771.43veh/km, 75514.29veh/km, 81542.86veh/km and 57971.43veh/km respectively. The established model of flow of traffic (Q) as a function of total traffic in space (T) in this study is with RMSE and NSE of 0.0001 and 0.9999 respectively, which justifies the validity of the function.