Traffic Impact Assessment of Infrastructure Development Projects for Sustainable Urban Growth

Abstract

Infrastructure development projects in urban areas often create impacts on the urban life. As the size of the projects increases, undesirable effects such as traffic congestion, traffic accidents, and environmental problems may become unacceptable to the community. In Vietnam, there witnesses rapid development of infrastructures, especially high-rise buildings in the big cities. These infrastructures generate high traffic demand and may cause serious traffic congestion on the surrounding transport network, thus assessment of traffic impacts (TIA) imposed by the projects is essential in controlling spontaneous development for sustainable urban growth. For TIA to be actuated, there should be a statutory document that institutionalizes the requirements on conducting TIA in the project appraisal, and a technical framework that guides the structure, content, procedure and method for TIA execution. However, in Vietnam, such essential documents are not yet available. This paper reviews TIA implementation in some countries, addresses issues in TIA execution practice, figures out the key contents of a TIA report, and proposes solutions to actualize the execution of TIA for development projects for sustainable urban development in Vietnam.