GIS@development December 2002: "Environmental Effects of Urban Traffic

Growing Urban centres necessitate the sprawling of transportation network, increasing distance between places of residence and work which needs to be covered in minimum time. The increased socio-economic status of urban population coupled with inadequacy of public transport has encouraged personalized means of transport. This craze for owning vehicles in urban centres, has led to considerable noise and air pollution, especially in big cities. (Table 1)
Table 1. Noise levels in major Indian cities

City	Day	Night
Delhi	83 dB	77dB
Calcutta	82dB	75dB
Bombay	80dB	71dB
Madras	77dB	73dB

Acceptable noise level is 50dB as prescribed by Ministry of Environment and Forests (1989)
dB stands for Decibel
Jaipur, which is one of the twenty three metropolitan cities in India, with a population growth rate of 49% per decade, is also encountering similar problems. The city besides being the capital of Rajasthan state is also a major tourist centreof the country. The city has developed in a rather imbalanced form. While most of the economic activities are located in the walled city area, the residential colonies are growing in western and southern parts, which are far off from the walled city (the main centreof activities). This imbalance in the location of jobs and residences over space coupled with inadequacy of public transport system generates huge volumes of intermediate and personalized traffic especially on arterial roads, with growth rates of traffic volumes ranging between 6-12% per annum. The objective of this paper is to model the effects of urban traffic on environment in terms of population affected by air and noise pollution, using predictive and dispersion models, in a GIS environment with inputs from remote sensing. The major arterial roads in Jaipur have been considered in this study.

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