Question

Explain the necessity and objects of highway planning

Answer 1

Just like simple roads within a city, Highway planning requires proper planning to ensure that the high investment going into the project reaps benefits to as many people as possible for as long as possible.

For example, an inter-city highway, may need to go through a lot of villagers, farmland etc. a proper plan is required to understand the costs of such a move and alternatives.

Before such projects start, a team is made to scan and verify the design and lengths of the roads.

Other planning will include the kind of material to be used to match the local weather e.g. sunny, raining, snow etc and keeping the whole project under budget.

Today, environmental degradation plays a huge part and so this should also be considered

Answer 2

Transport is declared as derived demand because it is required to attain some other work. With increase in population the demand fro transport increases proportionally. For example, considering two cities connected by road but the road is small that it cannot accommodate heavy vehicle flow. Because of these problems like heavy traffic, large waiting time, lower utility level of passengers and less interaction among cities occur. In order to avoid such problems, new highway can be constructed.

The demand for that highway can be estimated by the following theories:

1)    Land Use Approach

2)    Gravity model.

3)    Economic theory

Land Use approach:

This theory explains how the trips are made between different land uses. For example: the amount of trips that are attracted by commercial area is more than the residential area.

Gravity model:

This explains how the traffic flows between two travel zone increase with population and distance between two zones.

Economic theory:

It is cost based approach to travel demand. It is based on the fact that Transport is a derived demand.