Impact of Particular Indicators of Urban Development of Cities in the Czech Republic on Average Road Traffic Intensity

Abstract

This paper deals with the dependency between the development of road traffic intensity and several statistic and spatial indicators, which are monitored in cities of the Czech Republic. Road traffic intensity was used as the basic phenomenon. The other city indicators are residential, productive, recreational and other areas, population and many other indicators. This analysis is a part of a large research focused on last 40 years in cities of various sizes, traits, and location in the country during last 40 years in 10 years’ time steps. Stagnating or even a decreasing number of inhabitants of cities on one side and increasing road traffic intensity is a typical characteristic in most cities. The fact concerns both cars, and lorries; motorcycle form of transport has receded for more than 80 % during these 40 years. The paper shows that the urban development is strongly dependent on historical developments of individual cities. It means that influence of individual indicators varies in individual cities. There was an important difference between the period before and after the political change in 1989. The aim of the paper was to analyse a long period of urban development of a high number of Czech cities and to determine if their development can be generalized for all of them or it is more individual. Future situation of cities can be more reliably derived from the historical development of individual cities than from deep statistical analyses of a higher number of cities. The result will help urban engineers for urban areas modelling.