Traffic Management During a Big Sport Event: A Case Study in Kolkata City

Abstract

Big events such as sports, concerts, political gathering, fairs, and etc. result in high congestion levels as attendees overload the roads in the network surrounding the event venue, which warrants for development of an efficient and systematic traffic management programme. This paper presents a methodology to assess the impact of a big event on an urban road network and to evaluate different traffic management strategies on the basis of their efficiency in alleviating the impact. A micro-simulation model of the study network is developed with a special emphasis on the pedestrian-vehicular interactions throughout the network. Various traffic management strategies are formulated and evaluated using the micro-simulation model based on several performance criteria. The evaluation results are then analysed to identify the best alternative which can be used for field-implementation under similar event scenarios. This study is conducted with reference to a cricket match hosted at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, India.