The peak hour remains indispensable for testing capacity, queues, delays, and critical operating conditions. The problem begins when it is treated as if it alone represented the mobility produced by a development or by a territory.
The peak hour remains an important lens. The mistake lies in confusing the lens with the entire system.
A technically defensible study must demonstrate why the chosen time window is representative. In some developments, the two hours of greatest vehicular demand may still concentrate the impact; in others, the critical point will be school drop-off, a shift change, nighttime operation, the queue of delivery motorcycles, or the overlap among buses, pedestrians, and freight. The methodology must follow from the activity and the territory, and not merely from a script repeated out of habit.
The peak hour has not lost value: it has lost exclusivity
The capacity analysis of an intersection depends on a critical period: directional volumes, vehicle composition, signal timing, geometry, queues, and delays still require concentrated observation. Capacity methods and microsimulation remain useful for testing whether accesses, crossings, and corridors can handle the projected demand.
The limitation lies in the improper leap between two different claims: identifying the worst interval for automobiles does not mean identifying the worst interval for pedestrians, public transit, freight, or road safety, nor does it mean that one Tuesday represents every weekday, or that a mixed use operates with the profile of a single-function development.
International technical references have broadened this framing. The practice recommended by the ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) for development impact analyses incorporates walking, cycling, and public transit, in addition to vehicles, and relates demand to site design, parking, and the dispersion of peaks. This guidance does not abolish vehicular analysis; it repositions it within a multimodal system.
Urban daily life has become more variable
Hybrid work has reduced the regularity of some commuting trips, but it has not eliminated the need to travel. International studies point to changes in frequency, in the days chosen to go to work, and in the relationship among public transit, automobile, bicycle, and walking, an effect that depends on occupation, income, and the real possibility of working remotely. At the same time, digital platforms have made more visible the flows that do not follow the conventional workday: ride-hailing vehicles waiting for passengers, motorcycles at temporary delivery points, and stores receiving restocking within short windows. International transport organizations emphasize that the growth of e-commerce puts pressure on last-meter logistics, where private operations meet the sidewalk and public space.
These changes shift part of the problem toward curb management, treated by international technical associations as an urban resource contested by public transit, boarding and alighting, freight, parking, and bicycles. When a study measures only the flow crossing the roadway section, it may fail to record the maneuver that blocks a lane or the crossing generated by a boarding point on the opposite side.
Functions vary according to use, location, and calendar: different conflicts may appear outside the traditional vehicular peaks.
In Brazil, the legal basis is already broader than automobile flow
Brazilian Law No. 12.587/2012 (National Urban Mobility Policy) defines urban mobility as the integration of modes, services, and infrastructure aimed at the movement of people and goods. Among the contents of the Urban Mobility Plan are road circulation, accessibility, modal integration, trip-generating hubs, and controlled-access areas. The legal priority given to non-motorized modes and public transit also rules out a reading focused solely on automobile capacity.
The CTB (Brazilian Traffic Code) subjects projects capable of becoming traffic-attracting hubs to the prior approval of the competent authority. In practice, the way of demonstrating impact varies among municipalities, whether as an Estudo de Mobilidade Urbana (Urban Mobility Study), a Relatório de Impacto de Trânsito (Traffic Impact Report), or a component of the EIV (neighborhood impact study). The name does not settle the scope; it is the Termo de Referência (Terms of Reference), the municipal legislation, and the characteristics of the development that define what must be analyzed.
The Ministério das Cidades (Ministry of Cities) itself acknowledges that an origin-destination survey is not the only form of diagnosis: pedestrian and vehicle counts, satisfaction surveys, collaborative maps, and socioeconomic data can be combined, guidance that is particularly relevant for development studies, where the question tends to be more localized.
What international practice adds
The most consistent change is not a specific tool, but a new logic of analysis. International transport organizations propose replacing the reasoning of predict demand and expand supply with an approach that first defines the desired urban outcomes and then tests how to achieve them, assessing not only how many vehicles fit, but how the project influences access, safety, emissions, and the possibility of modal choice.
Contemporary planning processes combine micro and macroscopic models with data from GPS, mobile telephony, and traffic signal controllers, integrated with household surveys and censuses to understand patterns with greater spatial and temporal resolution. In common, these experiences use new sources to complement field observation, not to dispense with calibration or technical judgment.
An international study on Mobility as a Service relates new travel patterns to the need for coordinated networks and better first- and last-mile connections. Another, on public transit in a hybrid-work world, recommends aligning objectives from the outset and acting in growth areas with decentralized access. These are useful references for framing questions, but their findings cannot be transferred mechanically to Brazilian cities.
Five dimensions of a contemporary study
A robust diagnosis begins with the question it needs to answer. From that starting point, five dimensions help verify whether the chosen scope is sufficient:
- Time. Identify hours, days, seasonal periods, and events capable of altering demand, distinguishing typical, critical, and exceptional conditions.
- Modes and users. Account for the relevant movements of pedestrians, people with disabilities, bicycles, public transit, motorcycles, automobiles, and service or freight vehicles.
- Curb and accesses. Observe dwell time, queues, loading and unloading, boarding, parking, entrances, and conflicts generated by maneuvers.
- Territory. Relate the site to its immediate surroundings, to corridors, and to access to urban opportunities, without confusing local impact with a preexisting structural deficiency.
- Scenarios. Compare the current situation, the no-project scenario, implementation, full occupancy, growth, and mitigation measures.
The matrix does not impose the same level of depth on every case; it serves to document why certain dimensions were included, simplified, or considered immaterial.
More data does not replace a research design
Cameras, sensors, ticketing, GPS, telephony, and collaborative databases expand the capacity to observe the city, but they also bring limitations. A sample of connected vehicles may represent speed on corridors well and walking poorly; app records show the operation of that platform, not the entire demand; aggregated data may hide the critical condition of an access point. For this reason, source, coverage, period, and processing must be documented. The protection of personal data must be planned from the contracting stage onward, with a preference for aggregated or anonymized information, assessed in light of the LGPD (Brazilian Law No. 13.709/2018) whenever personal data are processed.
Short counts carry temporal bias and must be interpreted with hour, weekday, and seasonality factors when the intent is to extrapolate them. For pedestrians and cyclists, weather and day-to-day variability carry even greater weight. In a local study, continuous monitoring will not always be necessary, but there must be justification for considering the observed period representative.
How this changes an EIV or EMOB
In residential developments, the analysis may need to relate the vehicular peak to crossings, access to public transit, deliveries, and gatehouse operation. In school, healthcare, retail, or logistics uses, the critical period may differ for each component: the same geometry may work for through traffic and fail when boarding occupies the side lane.
It is not necessary to turn every study into a municipal plan or a complex model. The logical chain must link activity, trips, time, modes, accesses, the affected network, and the proposed measures, with a scope proportional to the impact: it grows when there are atypical schedules, heavy curb operation, or poor connection to active modes.
The comparison of scenarios must separate the incremental impact of the development from preexisting problems, which improves the definition of responsibilities and makes it possible to evaluate mitigation by performance: queue reduction, crossing safety, cycling continuity, or the organization of deliveries.
What developers and teams should organize
Before beginning data collection, six decisions help make the study more efficient and defensible:
- Confirm the local requirement. Check the legislation, the classification of the generating hub, the Termo de Referência (Terms of Reference), the area of influence, and the approval criteria.
- Build the operational calendar. Map shifts, classes, appointments, deliveries, events, and the times of greatest interaction with the surroundings.
- Define users and conflicts. Identify who arrives, leaves, crosses, waits, parks, delivers, or depends on public transit.
- Combine sources with purpose. Use counts, observation, interviews, and digital databases according to the question, recording coverage and limitations.
- Test more than one scenario. Compare growth, full occupancy, modal distribution, and the performance of mitigation measures.
- Maintain traceability. Document assumptions, dates, weather, raw files, calibration, and the justifications for including or excluding each dimension.
The counterpoint: broadening the view is not broadening everything
There is a risk opposite to the narrow study: collecting large volumes of data unrelated to the decision. An excessive scope may increase cost, time, and noise without improving the conclusion; quality does not lie in the number of hours monitored, but in the correspondence among hypothesis, evidence, and proposed measure.
It is also inappropriate to assume that international trends automatically describe local reality. Hybrid work affects occupations unevenly; micromobility depends on infrastructure and regulation; deliveries vary according to income and density. External references serve to avoid blind spots and to design tests, not to replace territorial data.
Conclusion
The contemporary city produces demand in layers. The vehicular peak remains necessary, but it coexists with peaks of crossing, boarding, delivery, school activity, and public transit use. Studies that observe only one interval may correctly size an intersection and still fail to understand the main conflict created by the development. The technical response is not to abandon consolidated methods, but to connect them to a multimodal, temporal, and territorial reading, with proportional data and transparent scenarios.
Technical and scoping note
This article is technical and informational in nature. It does not establish a universal minimum content for an EIV, an EMOB, a generating-hub study, or a traffic impact analysis. The applicable scope depends on the municipal legislation, the Termo de Referência (Terms of Reference), the competent authority, and the impact potential of the development. The international references were used as a conceptual and methodological basis; their application to Brazil requires calibration with local data.
Sources consulted: Brazilian Law No. 12.587/2012 (Política Nacional de Mobilidade Urbana) e Brazilian Law No. 9.503/1997 (Código de Trânsito Brasileiro); Ministério das Cidades (Caderno de Referência para Planos de Mobilidade Urbana e Pesquisa Nacional de Mobilidade Urbana) (link pending validation); Institute of Transportation Engineers (link pending validation); Fórum Internacional de Transportes/OCDE (link pending validation); Banco Mundial (link pending validation); associações técnicas internacionais sobre gestão do meio-fio e monitoramento de tráfego; Brazilian Law No. 13.709/2018 (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados). The text of this article is an original synthesis by LZ Ambiental.
LZ Ambiental develops Urban Mobility Studies and Neighborhood Impact Studies, connecting road operation, accessibility, land use, and the real characteristics of the territory. A representative diagnosis begins with the correct definition of the question, the period, the users, and the scales that effectively influence the viability of the development.
