Advances in Traffic Restraint Measures in Urban Areas

摘要

This paper first describes traffic restraint measures applied in urban and/or suburban areas and it assesses the role that these may play in easifying and calming traffic. The nature of these measures and some standard issues in their planning process are presented. The difficulties in the implementation of these measures are then discussed on the basis of a number of 17 traffic management studies carried out in the Athens’ northern suburban area of Maroussi.Following this, the paper proceeds to a further step in the design of such measures by introducing a set of environmental parameters in the whole planning process – the latter determine and affect the environmental quality of urban roads. These parameters are tested in practice for a representative network of roads in the urban complex of Maroussi forming an inner ring road, along which bicycle lanes are introduced and thermal comfort measures are taken. It is proposed these environmental parameters can be involved in the planning process and that can be used as potential tools of an advanced transport policy, which adds the environmental quality of roads to the targets of the whole traffic restraint process.