Towards Automated Road Information Framework: A Case Study of Tanzania

Traffic congestion problem has been noticed to have a serious impact on the economy of the country in terms of time wastage, energy consumption costs, human loss and environmental effects. Different strategies have been used so far all over the world as shown in the literature review. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is a multi-technology approach that can help to handle the issues and create a complete congestion reduction framework. This paper presents a case study for implementing automated road management system using networks in Tanzania, where three cities highly affected by traffic congestion have been studied. Study results show that these cities have not yet implemented new technologies in road traffic management; instead the traffic is controlled using traffic police officers and traffic lights only. The traffic lights use an old technology that cannot manage traffic in relation to the real-time situations. This study proposes components for a framework, which will assist automation in road traffic management. From the review of various existing ITS of which Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) and Advanced Travel Information System (ATIS) are subsystems, we have identified the possibility to integrate the two sub-systems within the framework. Three-phase traffic theory has been referred, FOTO and ASDA models are applied to the automatic recognition and tracking of congested spatiotemporal traffic patterns on roads.