Using big data to estimate the impact of cruise activity on congestion in port cities

By using big data that are generated by crowdsourced mobility platforms and GPS devices, policymakers can now better understand the relationship between cruise activities and traffic congestion, identify key areas in the road network that need traffic flow improvement, and design appropriate measures to take advantage of cruise tourism while mitigating its effects on urban mobility. This study uses big data and econometric techniques to analyze the relationship between traffic congestion and cruise activity for five of the busiest cruise destinations in South America and the Caribbean: Buenos Aires, Callao, Cartagena, Montevideo, and Rio the Janeiro. Over 80 million observations were collected from automatic identification system (AIS) and crowdsourced traffic data platforms for 2019. Results suggest that cruise activity causes a 12% increase in urban congestion. The analysis of big data presented in this paper facilitates the design of customized interventions to ease congestion according to the temporal dynamics of traffic flows, thus leading towards more efficient traffic management.