THE USE OF GIS TECHNOLOGY TO IDENTIFY THE SHORTEST TRAVEL PATHS. CASE STUDY: THE CITY OF CRAIOVA

In a city with a population of 298.928 inhabitants (January 2009), about 278.7 km of road (without the northern ring road) and a road density of 3.1 km/km2, identifying the optimal routes for moving vehicles is a necessary operation under the temporary removal of use (28 months, from March 2011) of some street sectors in the downtown area, which is currently the subject of an infrastructure modernization work, in order to streamline the cars traffic.The optimal routes were identified using Network Analyst extension of ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 software, which calculated the shortest paths between a point of departure and an arrival one, using distance as impedance. In this case the points between which it was intended to identify the shortest routes were selected taking into account the fact that much of the Craiova’s population located in the north – western neighborhoods, faces traffic problems while they are moving toward the center of city. Therefore, this material is intended to be a support, resulted in some maps, in order to identity and choose the best travel route.