The hypothesis for this piece of coursework is “Exeter is dealing well with its traffic needs”

As shown in the maps on the previous page Exeter is a city in the south-west of England, with areas like Dartmoor which is a national park nearby, Exeter is also surrounded by towns and villages like Topsham, Exmouth, Starcross and Lympstone. At the moment Exeter's population is around 111,000 but is always growing. Exeter has many transport links, including two main train stations and a few more local ones, a successful bus service, many roads in and surrounding Exeter and an international airport. Exeter's main train stations are Central station which is a few minute walk to the city centre and St David's station which is a 15-20 minutes walk or a few minute bus journey. Exeter has more local train station such as St Thomas train station, but these unlike the two main train stations which have trains which travel all around the country only have trains which travel to closer towns or cities. Exeter's main bus service which is Stagecoach, has many routes which enables you to travel around and just past the outskirts of Exeter, Stagecoach also have a Main bus station in Exeter which also has less frequent buses which travel further to place all around England. The last transport link which Exeter has is Exeter's international airport which as well as flying chartered flights also fly scheduled flights around England. Exeter's chartered flights don't only include short haul flights to places in Europe but have recently started to fly long haul flights to places like New York and Canada. Exeter has many roads surrounding and passing through it including the M5 which is a motor way which starts by Exeter and ends up by Birmingham, there is also many A roads neighbouring Exeter including A30 and the A38 which join at the start of the M5 and also the A377 which passes through Exeter and joins to the A30. Lastly there are several B roads including the B3212, B3183, B3123 and the B3183. As Exeter's population is growing more and more people are driving and buying cars this therefore increases Exeter's car ownership and traffic problems, due to this increase in people and cars Exeter's traffic needs are becoming more and more important. In places which have had the issue of congested roads and other traffic problems, traffic management strategies have already been tried, like in London; they have now introduced a payment which has to be made for vehicles to be able to drive in the city centre. The roads which I will be focusing on are: à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½Alphington Road à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½Cowick Street à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½Exebridge à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½High Street à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½Topsham Road The roads and area which I will be concentration in this investigation on are shown on a map opposite. The area which I will be mainly working with is in and around the city centre and is shaded in brown on the map, and all the roads except Topsham Road which I am concentrating on are shaded in red To investigate this hypothesis I will be mainly working in and around the city centre, I will ask questionnaires, take traffic counts and photos, send emails, and also use the internet. I will then put the data into graphs and diagrams and do some calculations which will then tell me if my hypothesis is correct or not.