Freeway Management Systems: Supporting Capacity Improvements for All Modes

Abstract

Commuters on Cape Town freeways experience congestion on a daily basis. The Freeway Management System (FMS) was used to inform various studies, amongst others specific network improvement studies and the Congestion Management Strategy of the City of Cape Town. One of the outcomes of these studies identified a section of Strand Road in Bellville as a top priority. Queues of up to 5 kilometres regularly spilled back onto R300 freeway during the weekday morning peak periods. This not only resulted in significant delays to all road users, but more specially increased the risk of crashes along the freeway. The aim of this paper is to illustrate how the identified improvements implemented along Strand Road improved not only the traffic operations for the freeway and arterial users, but also for all other modes of traffic, including pedestrians and cyclists, but more importantly all public transport users. This paper also illustrates simple design concepts, which are often neglected and which if implemented improve traffic operations and the safety and user experience of pedestrians and cyclists.