Probabilistic Modeling of Urban Vehicle Traffic Under COVID-19 Mobility Restrictions Using AI-Based Video Data: A Case Study in Cluj-Napoca

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting mobility restrictions significantly disrupted urban traffic patterns. This study quantitatively assesses the impact of these restrictions on vehicle flow at a signalized central intersection in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, through an integrated methodology combining continuous radar-based traffic measurements and AI-assisted video analysis. Traffic data were collected before the pandemic (November 2019) and during the lockdown period (April 2020), enabling a comparative evaluation of flow characteristics and vehicle arrival patterns. Under constrained observational conditions, vehicle arrivals were modeled using a probabilistic framework grounded in the Poisson distribution. The findings indicate a dramatic contraction of mobility demand, with traffic volumes declining in 2020 to 9.55% of pre-pandemic levels. The probabilistic assessment highlights the predominance of free-flow regimes under reduced demand and confirms the adequacy of the Poisson model in low-density traffic scenarios. The proposed framework is transferable to other urban contexts and supports resilience-oriented, data-driven traffic management under extreme mobility disruptions.