Abstract:

With the rapid development of tourism, there has been a sharp increase in traffic demand in tourist cities during public holidays, which results in various traffic problems. This article examines the traffic characteristics of Xiamen using floating car data (FCD) on 1 October (a public holiday) and 14 October 2014 (a normal working day). The spatial scope of the study was determined by the spatiotemporal differences between the number of trips on the public holiday and the normal working day using the origin and destination's kernel density estimation method. Road network capacity was estimated by analyzing the change of traffic volume near the tourist sites using kernel density estimation based on FCD, and comparing with road facility attributes such as the grade of the road section, and the number of lanes. Finally, the study validates the feasibility of the method by estimating the traffic speed of the road sections in the road network. The results show that there exist spatiotemporal differences between the tourist traffic on the public holiday and commuting traffic on the normal working day, and the method for road network capacity study near the tourist sites is effective based on FCD. The road capacity near Xiamen University and Nanputuo Temple cannot meet the traffic demand during the public holiday. The estimation of road network capacity near tourist sites can provide a basis for reasonable planning and management of the tourism road network during the tourist season.

Key words: tourist traffic, road network capacity, kernel density estimation, floating car data (FCD), Xiamen Island