Amit Patel

February 10, 2014

Research Proposal
The Eects of Sporting Events on Trac Congestion
A major issue for municipalities when deciding to construct or relocate a stadium for a profes-
sional sports team is the stadiums locations eect on trac. Recently, the San Diego Chargers
renewed their lease on Qualcomm Stadium for the 2014 season, something they have the option to
do after every season. This option exists because the Chargers have been advocating for the con-
struction of a new stadium for many years. However, city ocials have denied their requests citing
trac concerns as one of the reasons. Trac congestion is also a reason why the Chicago Cubs are
forced to play over 50 home day games a season, while other clubs on average play merely 25 home
day games a season. Fans and former players alike, often point to this as one of the reasons the
Cubs have been unable to win a World Series. Despite these concerns, there exists little empirical
research on the eects of holding a sporting event on trac.
My goal is to investigate the eects a professional sporting event has on trac patterns. I
plan to use a regression discountuity design to identify how NFL games aect trac in California,
particularly in San Diego and the Bay Area.The variation will come from Sundays with home games
versus Sundays without home games during the NFL season. This data will likely encompass the
years 2007-2013. I choose 2007 as the cuto because this was when rail access to Candlestick Park
in San Francisco was built. An interesting caveat to the stadium location decision is that almost
all new stadiums are built with rail access. Using again a regression discountuity approach and the
implementation of rail access to Candlestick Park in 2007, I can investigate how much a rail line
can reduce trac on gamedays, if any. Trac data comes from the Freeway Performance Monitor
System, which provides highway trac data throughout California. Game data will come from
team websites or other sports websites. I chose the NFL in particular due to the fact that NFL
stadiums have the largest capacity and generally draw fans that also engage in tailgating activities.
1