Page 78 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Ramiz Babayev: “Traffic growth in the context of economic development - what
traffic calming measures can be taken?”

why traffic calming has occurred is that planners have recently decided that
dependence on private transport should be reduced in favour of public transport usage.
Planning of traffic calming measures in residential areas has to be conducted
in a sensitive way, so that environmental and safety conditions can be improved, as
these kinds of areas in particular are defined as „rat-run‟ places for pedestrians.
Eventually, traffic calming measures have been installed in residential areas to
reduce vehicle speeds and volumes by maintaining a balance between vehicles and
pedestrians moving in and out in the area in accordance with high safety levels.
Meanwhile, this article has examined some vertical deflection traffic calming
techniques which are usually applied in residential areas to prevent road accidents.
There is no doubt that the number of road accidents can be reduced by good design
and better management of vehicles and infrastructure. Since the beginning of the
1960s casualties caused by traffic growth have increased enormously; however, the
UK government aimed to decrease the number of injuries by setting a target and,
using a well-implemented policy, a decline was achieved by the 1990s and moreover
“slowing of traffic growth resulted in a drop of one-fifth in casualties in just six
years since 2000-2006” (Hedicar P., 2009).
No calming measure should affect the travel duration as the main idea is to
decrease the speed of vehicles and keep speeds stable in order to prevent any
casualties, as well as to protect the environment. It is well-known that transport is a
big source of air pollutants and it has been proved that CO2 emissions caused by
vehicles depend on design of vehicles, driver behaviour, speed, engine size and
efficiency issues (Hedicar P., 2009). This means that traffic calming measures
directly affect the reduction of CO2 caused by vehicles, as driver behaviour and
vehicle speeds are already being regulated by traffic calming schemes.
One of the most widespread traffic calming methods is road-narrowing. If we

take “Road-narrowing in Cooper Avenue in Walthamstow” as a case-study we observe that
the narrowed road caused new problems for residents and drivers as buses began to mount
the pavements, posing danger to lives. The problem is that, even though the road has been
narrowed, the speed limit remains at 30mph. Some residents consider that either a 20mph
limit should have been adopted instead of 30mph, or speed humps – which are very cheap
and more efficient than road narrowing – should have been installed (Guardian, 2010).

Conclusion

Why it is necessary to adopt traffic calming measures in residential areas?
Considering this question, we can say that, recently, traffic growth has impacted on
pedestrians in different ways; for example, vehicles speeding in narrow residential
streets are alarming and a possible danger to human life.

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