The Role of Institutional Factors in Forming Traffic in Kermanshah City

Kermanshah city, associated with unplanned developments in the past, has serious problems regarding traffic within the city. Municipality and the police office were widening streets and changing the rules of traffic to reduce traffic. But, these actions don’t obviate the boring traffic, so it might reduce people’s motivation for coming to the streets and prevent the formation of traffic by omitting unnecessary traffic. Thus, the action of organizations and institutions play an important role in using electronic systems, organizational solidarity and users’ proper distribution in the management of supply and demand traffic. This research seeks to answer the question that: what are the effects of institutional factors in the formation of Kermanshah city traffic?

This research is quantitative one based on the nature of the data, and is a cross-sectional survey based on method of collecting the data. In terms of purpose, it is an applied research. A researcher-made questionnaire has been used for collecting the data. The sample size has obtained 383 by Cochran (α=. /05 & P=. /5. The sampling method is based on multi-stage clustering. So, 38 blocks from more than 8,000 urban blocks has been randomly selected, and in each block, 10 questionnaires have been distributed by selecting odd number license plate at the beginning of each block. SPSS software has been used for data analysis. To describe and analyze the questionnaire, the frequency distribution table and Chi-square test have been used.

The results showed that, in the Kermanshah city, mostly personal cars are used than public (e.g. using buses) transportation (17%), and it is a factor in increasing traffic volume. People wander a lot to find a place for parking their cars in the center of city. The sudden shift of drivers to prevent falling in the pits and asphalt surface is high (77 %). A large number of participants (more than 55 % of high and very high groups) preferred walking across the street to cross or used roadway due to the lack of standard sidewalks. This has caused the problems such as traffic and stopping of cars for pedestrians, fatal accidents due to vehicle collisions with pedestrians, and so on. More than 65 % of the respondents have been less familiar with e-municipality services. And more than 80% have used e-municipal services low and very low. So, the majority of citizens resort to municipality for doing their activities and it also caused more traffics. People have forced to go out for doing actions of some organizations and thus it raises the traffic demand. They leave the house for actions such as purchasing the necessities of life (9/47%), going to work (5/39%), referring to the training centers (9/4%), going to banks (3/3%) and health centers (3/3%) and entertainment (8/0%). The use of electronic port of organizations in Kermanshah city is very low (approximately 80% of samples have used moderate and less of electronic portal of organizations). The online shopping of Kermanshah citizens is very low (approximately 89% of samples have done online purchase moderate and less). Online banking practices by citizens of Kermanshah are low (about 68% of samples moderate and less their banking practices have done online). In general, different uses have not been properly distributed in Kermanshah city, since about 85% of the sample population can do their work in their place of residence without going to other areas. The municipality and other government agencies and non-governmental organizations have an important role in forming Kermanshah traffic and in-city travel demand due to the need for personalized visits, the lack of internet systems, lack of organizational integration, and inappropriate distribution of applications which reduced the availability of services in neighborhoods. It is suggested that planners, in addition to managing the supply of traffic, focus on management of travel demand through organizational solidarity.