CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1      Background of the study
The problem of Mobility and safety is on the high side on the Nation’s transportation system. The impact of traffic congestion is palpable to anyone witnessing delay on Lagos roadways. An estimated 8 million people travel to work via public transportation each day on the 9,100 roads and expressways available in Lagos (World Bank, 2009). With more than 1 million registered vehicles in 2011, there are potentially more than one million trips made during the peak travel periods of the day; this is much more during seasonal festivities such as Easter and Christmas when there is an influx from other parts of the country. A recent study estimated the cost of traffic congestion in U.S. cities for 2005 at $78 billion, with 4.2 billion hours of delay and 2.9 billion gallons of fuel wasted. Fatalities on U.S. highways rose to 43,443 in 2005.58 Public transportation systems provided 10.1 billion trips in 2006, the highest in 49 years, with continuing increases documented through the first three quarters of 2007.59 Freight volume on U.S. highways is expected to increase to 22.8 billion tons in 2035, up from 11.5 billion tons in 2002. Commuters in Lagos experience the effects of traffic congestion on a daily basis. According to Adebiyi (2011), the congestion is caused partly by road users themselves. Lagos road users are known to be very impatient and bad at obeying traffic rules. Indeed many times traffic congestions have been caused by a driver refusing to give way for another motorist. The effects of congestion are many fold; some directly affect the drivers’ sense of wellbeing, be it times wasted sitting in a traffic queue and the changes in the behaviour of drivers. Such behaviour might include rude gestures, verbal insults, deliberately driving in an unsafe or threatening manner, or making threats. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) provide a proven set of strategies for addressing the challenges of assuring safety and reducing congestion, while accommodating the growth in transit ridership and freight movement. ITS improve transportation safety and mobility, and enhance productivity through the use of advanced communications, sensors, and information processing technologies encompassing a broad range of wireless and wireline communications-based information and electronics. When integrated into the transportation system’s infrastructure, and into vehicles themselves, these technologies relieve congestion, improve safety, and enhance U.S. productivity. Vehicle infrastructure integration has the potential to enable many services presently provided by infrastructureor vehicle-based ITS to benefit from enhanced communication between vehicles and the infrastructure. ITS deployment can impact transportation system performance in six key goal areas: safety, mobility, efficiency, productivity, energy and environment, and customer satisfaction. A wide variety of performance measures are used across the evaluations discussed in this report to assess ITS performance under each of these goal areas. Safety is measured through changes in crash rates or other surrogate measures such as vehicle speeds, traffic conflicts, or traffic law violations. Mobility improvements have been measured in travel time or delay savings, as well as travel time budget savings, and on-time performance. Efficiency findings document the capability of better managed transportation facilities to accommodate additional demand, typically represented through increases in capacity or level of service within existing road networks or transit systems. Productivity improvements are typically documented in cost savings to transportation providers, travelers, or shippers. Benefits in the area of Energy and Environment are typically documented through fuel savings and reduced pollutant emissions. Customer Satisfaction findings measure, usually through surveys, the perception of deployed ITS by the traveling public.