## 4 Results
### Tracking Traffic and Congestion during Construction Works  
As mentioned above, repeated traffic assessments were conducted to monitor traffic during the construction works. For this purpose, real-time traffic data provided by ESRI through Living Atlas World Traffic Services or Google Maps were overlaid with orthophoto images of Oradea.  
The real-time data used in the study, provided by Living Atlas World Traffic Services, Google Maps and Waze, were collected through crowdsourcing [39; 46]. Thus, road users provided data about their actual location along with the voluntarily shared traffic information. As mentioned earlier, these applications collect the location of all users/traffic participants to identify congestion, average speeds, excess road capacity, and information for simulations, traffic analysis, and route planning.  
So, if we regularly analyze the traffic situation in Oradea, we can see that after 15 November 2019, due to the start of construction works and the related traffic restrictions on most of the city's roads the speed has significantly decreased and many road sections have turned orange. We can also notice an increase in traffic problems on the city ring road and other secondary roads, where the average speed was previously high and marked in green most of the time.  
Figure 5: Road traffic in Oradea. 7 November 2019 (made by the authors with ArcGis Online).  
Figure 6a shows the typical traffic volume on a weekday in February 2020 around 2 p.m. (created by the author by using Google Maps).  
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, drastic restrictions were imposed nationwide starting 16 March 2020, and lasted approximately two months. The quarantine imposed had a significant impact on traffic. As in all major European cities, road traffic in Oradea came to a standstill during the quarantine. Despite the implementation of the abovementioned infrastructure works and the related restrictions, the city became \"green\" in terms of traffic [34].  
Traffic analyses conducted in the period after the quarantine was declared underscore these aspects. Figure 6b shows the traffic volume in Oradea on 29 April 2020, at 2:00 p.m.  
During the closure caused by the COVID-19, traffic in Oradea, similar to other European cities, dissipated, with congestion only on the road sections affected by the construction work.  
With the end of the quarantine and the resumption of the school year, traffic returned to the streets of Oradea, even in mixed traffic. Due to the state of emergency and the large number of students who continued school online, the number of road users was much  
Figure 6: Traffic in Oradea: (**a**) Typical traffic February 2020 at 2 p.m.; (**b**) real-time traffic on 29 April 2020 at 2 p.m.; (**c**) real-time traffic on 17 September 2020 at 8 a.m.; (**d**) real-time traffic on 26 October 2020 at 8 a.m. (made by the authors).  
lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic, but due to the construction work, traffic in Oradea was very busy, as shown in Figure 6c.  
Magheru Passage was opened to the public on 26 October 2020. The problematic crossing has received a new configuration: the direction of the Dacia--Gh. Magheru bridge allows fast passage without traffic jams regardless of the time of day; therefore crossing Magheru Boulevard is easy, but turning left has become impossible. Thus, the congestion problems have \"shifted\" to the adjacent intersections.  
Figure 6d shows the traffic situation on 26 October 2020 at 2 p.m. after the reopening of the passage. The maps were created by the authors using Google Maps and the legend of the maps is the same as that of Figure 4.