Traffic impact of the its time event

Abstract

The It’s Time event held on April 22, 2017, is seen as the pinnacle of religious events in South Africa. The estimated attendance is one million people, classifying the event as a major transportation event. Major transportation events can lead to large influxes of traffic to the event area and have an enormous impact on the transportation infrastructure surrounding the event. Analysed is the extent of the traffic impact on the event site, the city of Bloemfontein and wider surrounding network of the country. Further, is investigated the planning methodology followed by the organizers and if a one day event of this magnitude can be successfully managed from a transportation perspective. The organizers were faced with numerous transportation challenges. Identified is various principles followed by the organizers for the transportation planning and management of the event. These include information dissemination, management strategies and managing the travel demand. The traffic impact is investigated by analysing two forms of traffic data namely, Comprehensive Traffic Observation (CTO) counts and Historical TomTom Probe Data. Factors such as delay time, queueing lengths and travel time are considered. CTO counts consider the traffic volumes on key access routes to determine the amount of event traffic from different origins over South Africa