Environmental capacity as a basis for traffic management at local government level.

The development of a traffic management technique based on the determination of the environmental capacity of roads within the local street network is described. The procedure currently utilises traffic noise generation and the delay caused to pedestrians wishing to cross the road as two measures of the environmentally degrading impacts of traffic. Once acceptable "levels" of these two effects have been selected. "Maximum" volumes of traffic under specfified conditions of flow may be calculated, being the environmental capacity of that section of road. The paper describes the application of the technique in the inner metropolitan municipality of South Melbourne, Victoria and documents the on-going development of the procedure as a traffic management tool suitable for use at local government level.