Nowadays, the urbanization trends in India have given an impetus to the growth of the cities. Many cities have seen a large increase in road traffic and transport demand, which has consequently lead to deterioration in capacity and inefficient performance of traffic systems. Traffic in Chandigarh has also been increasing at much higher pace in tune with the vastly increasing commercial, industrial and manufacturing needs. Madhya Marg and Dakshin Marg, major arterial roads of Chandigarh are

more »

... intense pressure today due to increase in population and explosive growth in the number of private vehicles. Transportation professionals all over the world have discovered and embraced GIS as an important tool in managing, planning, evaluating, and maintaining transportation systems. GIS data and tools are revolutionizing transportation research and decision making, allowing transportation professionals to understand and solve complex transportation problems that were previously impossible. In this paper, traffic data (volume and speed) collected using automatic traffic counter-cum classifier is analyzed and its results are presented which further gives the capacity and level of service (LOS). The instrument used for study can work from minimum one hour duration to one year duration continuously whereas in manual method lot of manpower and time is required for collecting data for long period and it is available with software in which the site map can be incorporated to do repetitive traffic studies. In the end, digital map of Chandigarh is created using GIS highlighting various attributes of roads which help in the detailed analysis of various characteristics and its relationship to causative factors and ultimately leading to the solution for the traffic planners.