Transportation Engineering

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11888/3187

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Analysis and Short-Term Future Vision for the Transportation Plan in Jenin City
(2006) Ahmad Hasan Mohamad AL-Mosleh; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
There is a lack of urban and transportation planning in Jenin City. This study addresses the short-term planning for the transportation systems in Jenin City to reach at appropriate solutions for the transportation problems in the city. In addition, the study addresses other detailed objectives for the various transportation systems in the city. This study includes statistical data collection from its various sources and field surveys (traffic volume studies, parking studies, and inventory studies). The thesis includes a study of existing transportation systems (description and evaluation), traffic analysis of studied intersections (capacity, level of service, and signalization). The analysis includes existing and future conditions (after five years), which depend on projected number of vehicles based on natural population growth for Jenin City, as the number of vehicles during the last ten years was not regularly registered and licensed. The importance of this thesis is that there is a need for regularly conducting such studies every five years to update such plans taking into consideration several changes taking place in this city. Most of these changes come from political and economical reasons, in addition to the changing traffic conditions in the transportation network and the existing and proposed transportation systems resulted from the Jenin Master Plan. Based on the analysis, the study reached at several recommendations for the existing and proposed road network conditions, which form the transportation master plan for the city. The proposed changes include plans for the studied intersections and roadways, parking, public transportation, truck routes, pedestrian areas, and the institutional structure. The study concluded that only one intersection is warranted for signalization in the future, which is An-Naffa Intersection.
Application of Superpave System for Binder Selection Based on Local Conditions
(2008) Ala'a Shafiq Lutfi Abdullah; Dr. Osama Abaza; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
This thesis generally, aims to apply the Superpave system in West Bank regions. This system was developed in the U.S.A during period 1987- 1993. The temperature data for West Bank regions was obtained from Directorate of Meteorology at the Ministry of Transportation. The latitude for each city was obtained from geographical maps. The analysis of data showed that most of Palestinian areas require one Type of binder which is PG 64-10 excluding Jericho, which requires PG 70-10. According to a study conducted in Jordan about the properties of local binders, which is the same type of binder used in the West Bank, it appeared that it has the same properties of PG 64-16. Therefore, the local binder can be used in all West Bank regions excluding Jericho. In this thesis several special cases were studied as such as slow traffic, standing traffic, and heavy traffic volume. The optimum binders for these cases were determined accordingly. Finally, it is recommended to use Superpave system in the West Bank because it has better performance over the Marshall mix design, as found by several studies.
Aspects of A Traffic Safety Program in Palestinian Cities
(2001) Hussein Nor El-Deen Abu Zant; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
In recent days, limited efforts were applied to improve highway safety in Palestinian cities. Establishing highway safety programs is essential to achieve this purpose. The main component in such programs is planning. The main process in the planning component is the collection of accident data to form the accident database. Then, the analysis of such database will identify the hazardous locations. Effective countermeasures should then be applied at these hazardous locations. These countermeasures should eliminate or minimize the hazards of these accidents. Therefore, the application of such highway safety program will result in safety improvements. The police accident report form is the most important source to create the accident database. A new comprehensive police accident report was designed in this study. A new computer program "Accident" based on Microsoft Access Software was also developed in this study. This program is designed for a computerized data recording and tiling. lt is user friendly. It also provides options for data retrieval and analysis. In this study, the outline of the proposed safety program for Palestinian cities as discussed. Accident data in this study were based upon accident records of years 1997 and 1998 for the Nablus City. Threshold values for identifying hazardous locations were established based on these data. According to the established threshold values, Al-Hesba Intersection was one of the most hazardous locations in Nablus City. A detailed study was conducted for this intersection. Proper countermeasures were specified at this intersection such as retime signal, police enforcement, and repainting all pavement markings. The results of this research showed that Palestinian cities are in dire need for the implementation of such a program. Therefore, developing the highway trafhc safety program in Palestine is recommended.
Assessment of Intercity Public Transportation Demand and Elasticity in The West Bank
(2001) Abdel Majid Mohammed Hamuda Sadeq; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
The ability to predict and evaluate the intercity public transportation demand has become increasingly important in recent years. In the Palestine Territories, as the country is developing, it needs such a project to determine the relations between travel demand and factors affecting it. This study concerned with transportation planning in Palestine. It was undertaken to find the relationship between the public transportation demand and both operating and socioeconomic variables that influence demand. Therefore, the results obtained can be used to assess the intercity public transportation as well as for a basis to predict its future ridership demand. There are two main objectives of this study. The first is to develop the intercity bus ridership demand model. Socioeconomic and operating data in the Northem and Central Governorates were used in developing the model. in total six govemorates were studied including Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilia, and Salfit. A madiematical equation for intercity bus ridership demand was developed using five independent variables. These independent variables were; origin city population, destination city population, bus fare, and the percent of employees and students in both origin and destination cities. The correlation coefficient of the suggested aggregation model, R2, was 0,84. The second objective was to collect information about the public transportation ridership behavior using two different questionnaires for bus riders and shared taxi riders. The sampling size was 410 for the intercity bus riders, while the sampling size for the shared taxi riders was 158, which accomplished for five percent of the population of riders. Both questionnaires contain questions about personal characteristics of the riders, about the trip itself; and about changing mode preference for a change in bus fare or waiting time. These questionnaires were analyzed and the ridership demand elasticity toward the change in bus fare was estimated. As a result of bus ridership questionnaire, the elasticity of the bus ridership toward the bus fare change was estimated to be -1.83. This means that for every l percent increase in bus fare, there is an expected decrease in bus ridership by l.83 percent. The shared taxi questionnaire showed that the elasticity of riders towards the bus fare change was estimated to be 1.34. Cross—tabulations were conducted to examine the relationship between ridcrs characteristics and mode change based on changing bus fare, bus waiting time, or express bus service. The examined riders' characteristics were riders` job, monthly income, trip purpose, and the number of weekly trips. It was found that employees and students were the most sensitive to mode change based on fare change, reducing the waiting time, and availability of express bus services. They almost make daily trips and they try to save money and time. It was concluded that the study results could be used in evaluating the existing public transportation, and forecast future demand as a function of the suggested variables. It is recommended for future research to extend such efforts for the rest of the West Bank governorates and Gaza Strip.
Compliance of Access Management Techniques on Urban Arterials in Nablus City
(2006) Yazan Farid Abdulhadi Issa; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
Transportation services provided in Palestine are inadequate to satisfy both the current and increasing demand for transportation. Due to the increasing limitation of spaces and resources in most cities, there has been a growing trend in the management of the existing traffic system rather than building new facilities. Traffic management is a low cost improvement while constructing new facilities is capital-intensive and may be faced with the limitations of space and financial resources. The objective of this project is to evaluate the applicability and effectiveness of some access management measures on two urban arterials in Nablus City. Proper evaluation was performed for Rafidia-Yaser Arafat Street and Faisal-Haifa Street. The methodology of this research is based on the following items: i) Review existing international access management processes. ii) Explain the functions and the importance of access management measures. iii) Collect the related access management data about the studied streets. iv) Select the steps, techniques, and adopt access management standards which suite the Palestinian cities. v) Evaluate the effect of these techniques on the street network. vi) Survey the public's opinions on drivers, pedestrians, and business owners on the two studied arterials, by doing face-to-face interviews with these groups. The access management measures that will be discussed in this research address the following areas: intersection spacing, driveway spacing, median treatments and median openings, turning lanes and auxiliary lanes, street connections, and parking management. The main results of this study were: • There are no specific guidelines or standards that are universally adopted for some access management measures. • The level of compliance of the arterials in Nablus City with access management measures is relatively acceptable. • It is difficult to apply access management measures on urban arterials, especially near the CBD area, where space is limited and the need for accessibility is high, while it is much easier on rural arterials. • Closing some driveways and openings or prohibiting some movements improved traffic movements and level of service, and reduce delay on the main arterial streets in Nablus City. • LOS for signalized intersections was improved from (D-F) to (C-E). The unsignalized intersections, which operate at LOS (F) were improved to LOS (C). After the discussion of the applicability of access management strategies, it is concluded that these measures can be applied on Nablus arterials. For the two studied streets, some measures are easily applied, others can be applied with limited geometric improvements, and some measures could not be applied because they need large space.
Establishing Parking Generation Rates for Selected Land Uses in the West Bank
(2015) Jamil M. J. Hamadneh; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
Estimating parking demand in Palestine needs more oriented studies towards parking generation to enrich transportation planning, design and management by valuable information. The available local studies are partial studies and not based on comprehensive specialized studies. Furthermore, using regional or international models and rates of parking demand may not be appropriate for Palestine. This research is conducted to establish reliable reference for provision of parking supply for three major types of land uses, which are residential, office, and retail land uses. Seventy three sites of different land uses were selected through field investigations, interviews, and availability of information for each site. These sites cover all the targeted land use types and their classes (three classes for each type).The study covered all main cities in the West Bank. Data collection was conducted manually, which contains site characteristics and average of two days of parking counts during three periods (AM, PM, and Peak of the Development). The analysis of the attained data produced several parking models and rates that might be used as local specifications for parking demand and supply of the three selected land uses. Following the American Institute of Transportation Engineers procedure, simple linear or logarithmic/power model forms were investigated. The produced models have various levels of statistical significance for identifying the required parking spaces for a current and proposed development. The developed models are applicable in the peripheral areas of the cities. Fifty six models and rates were produced with variable accuracy. Good statistical models and rates were summarized and highlighted for each type of land use in tables. Parking generation models with good statistical significance (R2, etc.) were recommended, otherwise, parking generation rates are recommended. Simple linear regression, natural logarithmic linear regression and power were the forms of the recommended models for the studied land uses. Therefore, the parking demand of residential, office, retail land uses with the same characteristics can be identified based on the produced models and rates. This thesis forms the first step of a future Palestinian “Parking Generation Manual” that will contain various local land use types, as well as guidance for the Ministry of Local Government requirements of parking spaces for various developments.
Impact of the Current Transportation System on Poverty in the West Bank (Case Study: Nablus)
(2008) Nizar Shehadeh Othman Atawi; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili; Dr. Faisal Za’noon
One of the stated objectives of various international development organizations is “to reduce poverty through sustainable economic development.”Therefore, the question is how can transport systems best contribute to poverty alleviation? There are no direct and easy answers for this question. There are considerable changes in the transport system operations in the West Bank during the years of the Intifadah and due to the Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) measures on the road network. So it is important to study the impact of the current transportation system on poverty and standards of living. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the impact of current conditions of the transport system on the socio-economic aspects of the Palestinian life, particularly poverty and quality of life (in terms of transport accessibility, expenditures on transport, travel time and cost, affordability of public transportation, and access to markets and employment). The methodology of this research is based (a) reviewing related studies at the local and international levels, (b) surveying related existing conditions (related transport and socio-economic indicators), and (c) field surveying of transport and living conditions of selected communities. Nablus City was taken as a case study in this project. The main findings of this project are: 1. West Bank is facing great numbers of IOA measures, which had a devastating impact on the life of Palestinian people (economic, social, service, and other sectors). 2. Travel time and cost increase in the West Bank are results of closures and checkpoints, which have lead to income decrease and high levels of poverty rates in the Palestinian society. 3. Economic and social issues of the Palestinians have greatly been affected by these measures. 4. Poverty rates have sharply increased during the years of the Intifadah due to multidimensional reasons of unemployment, income decrease, and inaccessibility to work opportunities. 5. The field survey analysis indicates an increase in travel time and cost, decrease in income, change in home style, increase in transport expenditure, and difficulties in access to hospitals, educational institutions and general services. All were results of the closures regimes imposed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). 6. Drivers were also affected by the imposed measures. Less daily trips were made, income has decreased, vehicle maintenance frequency and cost has increased, and travel routes have constantly been changed to pass by the IOF road blocks and closures. 7. The Separation Wall has destructive effects on Palestinian life; isolating communities of each other, inaccessibility to work places, and access difficulties to social and service sites. Based on these results, it is recommended to continuously consider these closures in negotiating with the Israelis. The Palestinian Authority should continue working hard to remove Israeli checkpoints. Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority should establish measures to counter these effects on Palestinians. The Palestinian Ministry of Transport should also consider supporting the transport sector and re-establishing public transport fares to make the public transport more affordable. Nablus City was hardly hit by these closures. Therefore, every effort should be made at the official level to encourage investment in the city to strengthen its economy and reduce these effects.
Modeling Relationship between Geometric Design Consistency and Road Safety for Two-Lane Rural Highways in the West Bank
(2014) Mohammed Ghassan Dwikat; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
The objectives of this study are to investigate and quantify the relationship between design consistency and road safety for two-lane highways in the West Bank. This study produced speed prediction method using real time traffic speed data obtained from Google Earth maps, which were used to estimate the 85th percentile speed along an alignment that includes both horizontal curve sections and tangent sections. A comprehensive crash and geometric design database of two-lane rural highways has been used to investigate the effect of several design consistency measures on road safety. Previous studies showed that the most promising consistency measures identified in previous research fall into four main categories, namely: operating speed, vehicle stability, alignment indices, and driver workload. Five crash prediction models, which relate design consistency to road safety, have been examined. The generalized linear regression approach has been used for model development. All models adopted in this study showed acceptable levels of goodness of fit and over-dispersion. The developed models verified that the main design consistency measures have an important impact on safety. The consistency measures used in model development are: variation between the design speed and the operating speed, absolute difference of the 85th percentile speeds between successive design elements, difference between side friction supplied and demanded, average radius of curvature, average tangent length, maximum radius of curvature to minimum radius of curvature, curvature change rate, ratio of individual curve radius to average radius of the section, and visual demand of familiar drivers of the section. Validation step was performed; the goal was not only to compare the accuracy of different models developed, but also to evaluate the overall accuracy of Crash Prediction Models for use on rural two-lane highways in the West Bank. Validation requirement was to demonstrate that a model is appropriate, meaningful, and useful for the purpose for which it is intended. The models can be used as a quantitative tool to evaluate the impact of design consistency on road safety. An application is presented where the effectiveness of crash prediction models, which incorporate design consistency measures, is compared with those, which rely on geometric design characteristics. The study concluded that models, which explicitly consider design consistency, can identify the inconsistencies more effectively and reflect the resulting impacts on safety more accurately than those which do not. Finally, a systematic approach to identify geometrically inconsistent locations using the safety consistency factor has been proposed.
Public Transport Accessibility and Service Gap–Nablus City
(2015) Khalil Jaber Ahmad Qaisi; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
The increasing interest in sustainable development has underlined the importance of accessibility concept as a key indicator to assess Public Transport (P.T) investments. To date measuring P.T accessibility in Palestine has been limited and local agencies have never had a specific and an accurate measure to assess local P.T service accessibility. This study outlines a proposed methodology for assessing accessibility of intra-city fixed route P.T service in Nablus City. Previous studies showed that there are mainly two different types of research related to the accessibility of P.T systems. The first type deals with measuring access to the P.T systems and the second deals with measuring access to destinations through P.T systems. The major aim of this thesis is to study these two types of research through developing two indices to reflect accessibility level for each type. These indices are a Local Index of Public Transport Availability (LIPTA) and Travel Time Accessibility Index (TTAI). The methodology of the study is based mainly on the quantitative and analytical methods using the collected data and the field survey of P.T frequency as well as travel time field data. ArcInfo v.10.0 Geographic Information System (GIS) program was used in analyzing and displaying the results by using the network analysis functions to measure spatial coverage of P.T service based on the actual walking distance on the pedestrian road network. The results of this study showed clearly that the proposed indices provide a suitable methodology to measure and assessing P.T accessibility for urban area; LIPTA confirmed that the study area in general has a good P.T service availability and there is a lack of service along the peripheral areas. On the other hand, TTAI showed that there is a gap between private car based and P.T-based accessibility for studied O-D’s. The study recommends that the Ministry of Transportation and local agencies should take into account the accessibility concept to improve the P.T services as part of a comprehensive short and long-term transport plan. Nablus Municipality should relay on study results to support some policies that encourage the use of P.T as alternative transport mode.
Reality of Road Safety Conditions at Critical Locations in Nablus City with a Road Mapfor Future Interventions
(2014) Hozaifa Hasan Saad Khader; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
Nablus Governorate occupies the second level among the Palestinian governorates for the frequency of traffic crashes, while it was the first regarding the number of injuries resulting from traffic crashes during the years of this research, which are 2009, 2010, and 2011. This research aims to study the reality of traffic safety conditions at selected locations in the city of Nablus. Traffic crash data and information was collected based on crash reports from the Police Directorate in Nablus city for the study period. Data was collected at selected links and intersections in Nablus city, which are known as main and important locations in terms of their traffic conditions compared to other locations in the city. Analysis was done for several patterns of traffic conditions that may have an effect on traffic safety at these sensitive locations, such as crash rate, weather, lighting, road surface, road geometry, types and causes of crashes …etc. Studying the reality of traffic safety at these locations shows that certain conditions and patterns may contribute to the level of safety. Several results emanated from this thesis. For example, the highest intersection crash rates was at Al-Ghawi Intersection followed by the Western Graveyard Intersection and Al-Salam Mosque Intersection. As for streets, the highest rates were on Sufian Street followed by Omar Ibn Al-Khattab Street and Faisal Street. Furthermore, pedestrian crashes formed approximately 20 percent of all crashes, no problem of crashes involving pedestrians on Schools Street on the contrary to Rafeedia Street, less than 3 percent of all crashes involved old drivers, half of crashes on Al-Fatimah Intersection occurred during night lighting, less than 6 percent of crashes occurred in wet and cloudy weather conditions, female drivers were involved in only 6.6 percent of all studied crashes with 23.0 percent of crashes at the intersections of Rafeedia and Tunis Streets, and the highest percentage of crash causes (approximately 25 percent) was “failure to maintain safe distance”. This research and its results outline the realities of traffic crashes in Nablus city and form the road map for follow ups, further studies, and for improving traffic safety conditions in the city.
Trip Generation Models for Selected Land Uses in the West Bank
(2016) Ahmad Mohammad Mahmoud Mustafa; Dr. Khaled Al-Sahili
Trip generation is the first step of the four-step transportation planning process, which is mainly used for travel demand forecasting. This research investigates and provides models (trip generation rates and equations) for Residential, Office, and Retail land uses, which are considered as the major land uses in the West Bank; each land use was classified into three major classes. This study was conducted in accordance with the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) procedures and methodology in terms of sample size, independent variables, site selection, and procedures for estimating trip generation model, taking into consideration the specific characteristics of the local land uses. Special forms were designed to collect the required data about the developments and traffic counting. These forms were used by the researcher and well-trained surveying teams from all Palestinian cities. At least 6 samples were surveyed for each land use class. On the other hand, only one site was found for "Shopping Center", which is Plaza Mall in Al Bireh City. Therefore, for this class, the trip generation rate will be used in this study. Based on the analysis of the residential land use, the best independent variables that estimate trip generation are the number of persons and the number of occupied units. For office land use, the best independent variables that estimate trip generation are the number of employee and the occupied gross floor area. Based on the regression results of retail land use, the best independent variable that estimates trip generation is the occupied gross floor area. Pass-by trips were considered only for retail land use. As for the pass-by analysis, it is clear that there is an inverse proportional relationship between pass-by trips and the occupied GFA for large supermarket land use with R2 equals to 0.72, which is logical in the West Bank. The study recommended to use trip generation equation for models with R2 equal to 0.7 or greater. Otherwise, trip generation rates should be used. It is also recommended to adopt the mentioned methodology in this study for similar future studies and researches. Additionally, the study encourages other researchers to collect a new data in the future to increase the sample size so as to achieve higher accuracy regression results.

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