Strong Performance of Road Network During 1st Part of the World Football Tournament
Doha, Dec. 6th, 2022
Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), and through its own extensive multi-source traffic sensing network, has been monitoring the road network performance during the World Football Tournament by using its home-grown comprehensive Traffic Monitoring & Analytics platform.
Based on collecting tens of millions of data records daily, QMIC performed a comparison between the road network performance before and during the first stage of the tournament focusing on congestion levels/travel time, intersections waiting times and outdoor activities. Based on daily insights and analytics, the road network is showing great resilience with modest increase in overall congestion levels during first 11 days of the World football Tournament.
In this regard, Mr. Omar Mohammed Al-Jaber, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Outreach commented: “Since Qatar won the rights to host the World Cup in 2010, we have invested significant resources and effort to develop and deploy a comprehensive data collection network and intelligent mobility applications. We are pleased that our unique mobility platform and services are serving the needs of key local and international stakeholders, supporting the public at large, and can provide detailed insights about the road network performance based on our home-grown technologies and data network.”
The findings of this comparison have clearly shown that actions taken, and preparations completed by local road operators, event planners and regulators have been quite effective in minimizing the effect of the increased number of visitors and elevated activity levels on the performance of the overall road network.
Based on comparing the performance during Nov 20th – Dec. 1st with that during the month of Oct 2022, the following key findings are revealed:
- Congestion/Travel Time Performance:
- Compared to Oct, absolute levels of congestion increased modestly between 11am to mid night, and decreased during the morning period
- Overall, the congestion index (percentage increase in travel time compared to free flow traffic) stayed within acceptable levels of 10% – 18%. This is compared to congestion index values of 9% – 13% during the month of Oct
- The Tournament dedicated road network exhibited slightly more congestion levels than the whole road network
- During mid-day period (11am-3pm), the biggest relative increase in congestion level was 38% on Nov. 26th (coinciding with Tunisia vs. Australia game)
- During early evening (3pm-7pm), the biggest relative increase in congestion level was 29% on Nov. 29th (coinciding with simultaneous games of Qatar-Holland, Senegal-Ecuador)
- During late evening (7pm-mid night), the biggest relative increase in congestion level was %53 on Dec. 1st (coinciding with simultaneous games of Spain-Japan, Germany – Costa Rica)
- Waiting Time at Intersections:
- On average and compared to the month of Oct., waiting time at signalized intersections decreased by 5-10% during 7am to 11am, stayed the same during 11am-3pm, increased slightly by 5-10% from 3pm-7pm, and increased modestly by 15-20% from 7pm to mid-night.
- Outdoor Activity Levels:
- Compared to the month of Oct, outdoor activity levels showed a noticeable decrease in the morning period and a significant increase during the night period
- During 7 am to 11am, levels of outdoor activity consistently decreased by 15% to 20%
- During 7pm to midnight, levels of outdoor activity consistently increased by 20% to 25%
- During other periods, changes of -5% to 10% were experienced based on the specific day and time.
Dr. Fethi Filali, Director of Technology & Research at QMIC who led this effort commented by saying, “We have been quite pleased with the performance and availability of our extensive data collection network. During the first period of the World Football event, we have collected more than 250 million data records which were processed in real time to support our different mobility services and to deliver unique daily insights that were shared regularly with key stakeholders”.
These findings shed the light on the performance of the road network during the tournament and gives a comprehensive view of how the road network is coping with the increased number of trips and visitors. This can act as an important tool to have visibility on traffic and transportation operations and will help in planning efforts for the remaining of the current tournament and for future tournaments. It should be emphasized that our findings reflect the average performance (over many road segments and over time) of the road network. This does not imply that every street or smaller portion of the network performed the same (it could be the same, better, or worse).
QMIC will continue to monitor the performance of the road network for the remainder of the tournament and will share its findings at the end of the event.
About QMIC:
The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) is the first independent innovations center in the region with a focus on using R&D to develop and deploy Intelligent Mobility and Smart Cities platforms and technologies. QMIC’s main goal is to use locally engineered innovations & knowledge to enable creating home-grown technology industries that address national strategies and tackle regional emerging challenges. It was founded by Qatar University in 2009 and is registered and licensed to operate as a technology innovations center from the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP).
Since 2009, QMIC has been utilizing emerging technologies including Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and Location-Awareness to deliver data-centric platforms and services. In particular, QMIC has been leading in delivering platforms & solutions focusing on key domains including Intelligent Transport, Logistics & Telematics, Road Safety, and Connected & Autonomous Mobility (CAM).
Through its integrated innovations development & delivery model, QMIC represents a unique and important category within the national Research & Development & Innovations (RDI) enterprise in Qatar that is strategically driven, R&D-based, solution-focused, and business-oriented
For further information please contact Mr. Abdulrahman Ajjawi
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +974 55645390, +974 4459 3694