This paper focuses on the optimization of traffic flows in case of congestion phenomena due to the event “Luci D’Artista” in Salerno, Italy. The management of traffic deals with two different optimization techniques, that
foresee, respectively, a decentralized approach and a genetic algorithm. A cost functional, that estimates the kinetic energy on a portion of the real network of Salerno, is maximized with respect to the distribution
coefficients at nodes. The simulation results confirm the decongestion effects, that are also proved via the estimation of the time a car needs to cross fixed paths on the network object of study.