Assessment of Traffic Congestion in Karu Urban Area, Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Traffic congestion is a major setback in most of our towns and cities in Nigeria and across the world which limits spatial interaction between various neighbourhood within cities centre's and peri urban areas, metropolitan areas and sub cities sub- centres. This paper assessed traffic congestion in various point associated with landuse components. This study quantify traffic congestion at Abacha road junction, maraba central (Aso pada junction) and Ado junction using passenger car unit (p.c.u) value. The use of passenger car unit value employed hypothetical techniques influencing the factors such as mode of transport, peak hourly movement, pedestrian movement, road surface conditions based on the facts that this method is significantly related to urban landuse. Traffic congestion occurred when traffic is delayed due to the presence of excess number of vehicle on the same portion of road way at a particular time resulting to slower than the normal or 'free flow1 speed where is shall be queues of vehicles trying to use the road excess the designed capacity of the road. High traffic flow point corresponds to a higher degree of congestion in respective location and the result was validated in the field. The passenger car unit value quantified traffic congestion since it focus on the network congestion while, other work focused on broad links on flow of traffic in Karu urban are