MEM80112 The Problem of Traffic Congestion
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Answer:
Over the past few years, Australia has been faced by the problem of traffic congestion within most of its town centers. This has been attributed to the high urban population growth rate as well as the high rate of rural to urban migration (Zmud, Munizaga and Carrasco, 2013). The Australian government through the parliament and the ministry of transport has noted this disaster and has requested that research be undertaken to determine the mode of transport that is most preferred by the citizens so that in the next budget.
it can allocate funds to develop the infrastructure for this mode of transport. Additionally, the government has been noted that there is need to completely curb the traffic congestion within its cities and the only way to do so is to develop underground railway transport from can various railway stations. Therefore, it has also requested a research to be carried out to determine from which selected station the underground railway should be constructed. The purpose of the research is therefore to carryout statistical analysis on available data to provide information of the commonly used mode of transport and the station from which the underground railways station should be constructed.
Secondary type of data obtained from the Australian transport website is used for analysis. The sample data used is part of the “Opal Tap on and Tap Off Location” provided by the NSW open data (Opendata.transport.nsw.gov.ac, 2016). Only three variables are used in analysis of the data namely: mode (categorical variable indicating the mode of transport used), location (categorical variable indicating the railway station), and count (numerical variable indicating the count for the mode of transport). The information required from the data is the most preferred mode transport among the citizens and the most congested railway station of the selected stations so that the underground station can be built from there.
The techniques used in the analysis will be determination of proportion and construct a pie chart to indicate the most preferred mode of transport and a create a bar chart to indicate the railways station that serves more people and hence deserves the underground rail. The computation devices used are; computer with excel software, writing material, and a calculator. The deficiencies that that were found in the data were missing values. However, this deficiency was addressed by removing the missing values and ensuring that a large sample was chosen to make sure that the data is representative of the whole population.
Proportions for the modes of transport are used to determine the most commonly used method of transport (Bruce, 2015). A pie chart is used to present or visualize the mostly utilized method of transport. The table of proportions is as shown below Looking at the proportions and the average columns, it is evident that majority of the citizens prefer railways for transport, followed by buses. The above data is visualized in the pie-chart shown below
The selected railways station that assumed to serve the largest average amount of citizens on a daily basis are the Chats wood station, Circular Quay station, Central station, North Sydney station, Martin place station, and Town hall station. The table below shows the average number of people served by the stations on a daily basis.
The above data is visualized with the aid of a bar chart as shown below
It is evident that the most commonly used mode of transport is railway followed buses. Therefore, when the government will be allocating funds for the development of the transport infrastructure, it can consider developing the railway or road transport since they are the mean that will help reduce the traffic congestion by a big margin. The government can consider constructing the underground transport system of the centration because it serves averagely more people than any other station.
Looking into the initial problem of transport congestion, the data collected, the results obtained after analysis, and the interpretation done using the tables, bar chart and the pie chart, it is evident that the initial problem has been addressed. The commonly used mode of transport that require its infrastructure to be developed has been determined and at the same time, the railway station that serves majority of the citizens has been determined and its form this station that the underground railway system should be constructed.
References
Bruce, P. (2015). Introductory statistics and analytics. New Jersey: Wiley.
Opendata.transport.nsw.gov.au. (2016). Opal Tap On and Tap Off | TfNSW Open Data Hub and Developer Portal. [online] Available at: https://opendata.transport.nsw.gov.au/dataset/opal-tap-on-and-tap-off [Accessed 22 Sep. 2018].
Zmud, J., Munizaga, M. and Carrasco, J. 2013. Transport survey methods. Emerald Group Pub Ltd.
