Many cities’ roadways up to this date could not cope with the rapid development of

infrastructures like buildings that consist of shopping mall and centers (Miyamoto, 1992). The
City Bangkok in Thailand and Metro Manila, Philippines are some of the examples. Traffic
Impact Assessment (TIA) is necessary in planning of infrastructures before building, especially
in urbanized places to know the possible changes in might bring. The transportation planning
including estimation of width of roadways and route planning has come into realization, yet it
was not enough to stop and foresee the future traffic demand. Improper planning of development
projects in cities is one of the main problem, as planners tend to fail to forecast the future
demand of land use. That is why Traffic Impact Assessment is a must to assume the number of
traffic generation and demand in a place.

Thailand was earlier to implement TIA in the Southeast Asia followed by its neighboring
countries like Philippines. When urban development has come in Bangkok, Thailand, the
realization to plan and control the land use has come into their realization. Due to this several
policies have been implemented to control the development projects in the City. These include
Town and Country Planning Act of 1975, Building Control Act of 1992, Land Development Act
of 1992 and Enhancement and Conservation of Environmental Quality Act of 1992. Among all
of the laws the last one was the first to introduce the Traffic Impact Assessment, which mainly
focuses on environmental problems caused by development projects. Thailand saw traffic impact
as one of the environmental impact, due to traffic causes a lot of energy consumption as well as
road space, the reason why environmental impact studies must be performed by project
developers whose project occupies more than 300 parking spaces and has a gross-area greater
than 2000 square meters. According to Hakkao and Mohamed (1999) in Bangkok, development
in historically significant places that are susceptible in traffic as well as large building that have
the potential to grenerate large number of vehicles are all given through Traffic Impact
Assessments.

In Philippines, urbanized cities like Metro Manila faces traffic impacts because of the
development projects. Just like in Thailand, there is a law that is implemented requiring to
conduct Traffic Impact Assessment. The earliest version of this law is the Presidential Decree
1586 (in 1979) which has a goal of “establishing an environmental impact statement system,
including other environmental management related measures and for other purposes”, this law
has gone alterations. But, due to lack of comprehensiveness, the conduct of TIA has yet to be
established and it is weak to be done. Palmiano et al (1999) stated that in urbanized cities like
Metro Manila development related to infrastructures, follows the path of transportation system,
thus, development projects must be carefully plan and control before utilizing the land to
mitigate the traffic impact.