Assessment of Link Reliability as a Function of Congestion Components
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 10
Abstract
Travelers’ perception of reliability of a road network is typically based on factors contributing to both recurring and nonrecurring congestion. However, literature documents little research to integrate, estimate and assess congestion using both these disparate congestion components. Integrating recurring and nonrecurring congestion components to estimate congestion helps address questions such as “How reliable are roads in the transportation network?” “Which path is more reliable to reach the destination from an origin within an on-time window during a certain time of the day?” The focus of this paper is to develop and illustrate the working of a methodology to estimate travel time and its variations, travel delay index due to crashes and their severity, congestion score and reliability of each link in the network. Traffic volume, link capacity, travel speed, crashes and their severity, and estimated time taken for normal traffic conditions to restore after a crash are used in the computations. Temporal variations in travel time and crashes for each link are also studied as travel demand and crash occurrence depend on the time of the day. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted to examine and assess reliability of links based on variations in weights to integrate recurring and nonrecurring congestion components. Data collected for the city of Charlotte in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina are used to demonstrate the methodology.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers sincerely thank Charlie Jones and Anna Gallup of the City of Charlotte Department of Transportation, and Stephen Lowry of North Carolina Department of Transportation for their help with data required for this study.
References
Abdelwahab, H. T., and Abdel-Aty, M. A. (2001). “Applying fuzzy ARTMAP neutral networks to predict driver’s injury severity in traffic accidents.” Proc., 9th World Conf. on Transportation Research (CD-ROM), C. Park, J. R. Cho, J. Oh, Y. Hayashi, and J. Viegas, eds., Seoul, Korea.
Al-Deek, H. M., and Emam, E. B. (2006). “Computing travel time reliability in transportation networks with multistates and dependent link failures.” J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 20(5), 317–327.
Asakura, Y. (1999). “Evaluation of network reliability using stochastic user equilibrium.” J. Adv. Transp., 33(2), 147–158.
Asensio, J., and Matas, A. (2008). “Commuters’ valuation of travel time reliability.” Transp. Res. Part E, 44(6), 1074–1085.
Avineri, E., and Prashker, J. N. (2005). “Sensitivity to travel time variability: Travelers’ learning perspective.” Transp. Res., Part C: Emerg. Technol., 13(2), 157–183.
Bell, M. G. H. (1999). “Measuring network reliability: A game theoretic approach.” J. Adv. Transp., 33(2), 135–146.
Ebeling, C. E. (1997). Introduction to reliability and maintainability engineering, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Iida, U. N. Y., Kawaratani, S., and Suhanuma, M. (2003). “An analysis of potential of providing information on traffic accident to enhance travel time reliability.” Proc., Network Reliability of Transport, Proc. of the 1st Int. Symp. on Transportation Network Reliability (INSTR), M. G. H. Bell and Y. Iida, Pergamon, Tarrytown, N.Y., 189–208.
Iida, Y. (1999). “Basic concepts and future directions of road network reliability analysis.” J. Adv. Transp., 33(2), 125–134.
Iida, Y., and Wakabayashi, H. (1989). “An approximation method of terminal reliability of road network using partial minimum path and cut sets.” Proc., Transport Policy, Management, and Technology Towards 2001: Selected Proc., 5th World Conf. on Transport Research, Western Periodicals Co., Ventura, Calif.
Inouye, H. (2003). “An evaluation of the reliability of travel time in road networks based on stochastic user equilibrium.” Proc., Network Reliability of Transport, 1st Int. Symp. on Transportation Network Reliability (INSTR), M. G. H. Bell and Y. Iida, eds., Pergamon, Tarrytown, N. Y., 79–92.
Kwon, J., Petty, K., Kopelias, P., and Papadimitriou, F. (2008). “Empirical modeling of the effect of incidents on congestion and travel time prediction: Case study of Attica tollway in Athens, Greece.” Proc., Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting (DVD), Washington, D.C.
Pulugurtha, S. S., and Nambisan, S. S. (2004). “Estimating reliability and extent for the Las Vegas area congestion management systems.” Proc., Applications of Advanced Technologies in Transportation Engineering, 8th Int. Conf., K. C. Sinha, T. F. Fwa, R. L. Cheu, and D. -H. Lee, eds., ASCE, Reston, Va., 23–27.
Pulugurtha, S. S., and Pasupuleti, N. (2008). “How reliable are our roads? A case study using Charlotte, NC data.” Proc., Transportation Land Use Planning and Air Quality Conf., S. S. Pulugurtha, R. L. O’Loughlin, and S. Hallmark, eds., ASCE, Reston, Va., 79–89.
Pulugurtha, S. S., and Pasupuleti, N. (2009). “Using GIS to assess reliability of links on a road network.” Proc., Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting (DVD), Washington, D.C.
Sumalee, A., and Watling, D. P. (2008). “Partition-based algorithm for estimating transportation network reliability with dependent link failures.” J. Adv. Transp., 42(3), 213–238.
Texas Transportation Institute. (2009). “Urban mobility report 2009.” Rep. Prepared by Texas Transportation Institute, The Texas A&M University System, ⟨http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums⟩ (July 10, 2009).
Yin, Y., and Ieda, H. (2001). “Assessing performance reliability of road networks under nonrecurrent congestion.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1771, 148–155.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Aug 3, 2009
Accepted: Mar 25, 2010
Published online: Mar 27, 2010
Published in print: Oct 2010
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.