Traffic Surveys of Karachi Port Trust Region

Traffic Surveys of Karachi Port Trust Region

The Port of Karachi is one of South Asia’s biggest and busiest seaports, contributing a major proportion of the nation’s cargo. It is located between the of Keamari town and Saddar town, close to the main business district and several industrial areas. Karachi Port zone include Karachi Port, Karachi International Container Terminal, Pakistan International Port Terminal, South Asia Pakistan Terminal, Oil Terminal which handle dry, bulk, liquid container and other cargo. Facilitation of trade at the Karachi Port can be broadly categorized as ship handling, discharging/ loading of cargo, storage of cargo, clearance of cargo, security/ safety.
The location of Karachi Port makes necessary to continue the development works, keeping in view the futuristic demand, trade and commerce requirements of Maritime Transport, Karachi Port Trust (KPT) has formulated and launched number of projects which are in different stages of planning, tendering & execution. Before conducing any development, the ground conditions should be considered for better and effective implementation. The major chunk of freight movement between port and other areas of country is through roads, interacting with complex and congested road network of two towns namely Saddar and Keamari. There are other significant traffic attractors besides port operations which includes Jackson Market, Fisheries and residential zone of Shireen Jinnah Colony. Major complications in traffic movement are due to:

• Decrease in road capacity due to on street parking of heavy vehicles which results apparently in bottleneck congestion.
• There is an issue of heavy vehicles halt station in waiting to satisfy port inspection process of cargo or load on loading/unloading points of trucks, which creates long queues on entrance of port results in blockage of traffic.
• Continuous movement of heavy traffic which ultimately create bottlenecks especially on intersections
• Load on port service area which in turn result in formation of queues

Traffic studies are conducted to determine the number, movements, and classifications of roadway vehicles at a given location. This data help identify critical flow time periods, determine the influence of large vehicles on vehicular traffic flow, or document traffic volume trends.