Assessment of road traffic performance of the Tsunami evacuation road in Padang Municipality area based on the traffic volume simulation approach

There are many cities on the west coast of the Sumatra, which are at high risk of the Tsunami disaster. Regional Regulations on Regional Spatial Planning for each City/ Regency have compiled disaster mitigation by constructing several evacuation roads. This study wants to illustrate: what are the volume of traffic generation and road performance, if there is a Tsunami disaster. The simulation is developed by predicting traffic volume based on parameters, population density, vehicle ownership, land use, and activities in the area around the road. The assessment was carried out on two tsunami evacuation roads in the city of Padang, West Sumatra Province. The results show that the highest traffic volume occurred in the period from 06.30 a.m until 3:00 p.m., during school activities. One of the roads will not be able to accommodate the volume of traffic during a disaster, due to significant traffic congestion. This study shows that: (1) the period of activity and land use are two main parameters, which must be considered in designing tsunami evacuation roads, (2) The degree of saturation ratio and the ratio between the capacity of sections of Tsunami evacuation routes can be proposed as a parameter for assessing the performance of Tsunami evacuation roads in urban areas.