Travel Time Reliability Estimation: Use of Median Travel Time as Measure of Central Tendency
Publication: Transportation and Development Institute Congress 2011: Integrated Transportation and Development for a Better Tomorrow
Abstract
This paper proposes use of median travel time compared to mean travel time as the measure of central tendency to calculate Buffer Time Index (BTI), one of the most important measures of travel time reliability. This study examined gamma, exponential, largest extreme value, smallest extreme value, logistic, Weibull, lognormal and log-logistic distributions to determine the best fit to travel time data for two cases: 24 hours and peak hours for a highway with Variable Speed Limit (VSL) conditions. The goodness-of-fit tests indicated that the log-normal distribution best represented the travel time data for peak periods and log-logistic distribution better fitted the travel time data for 24 hours. The log-logistic distribution and log-normal distributions were positively skewed and for skewed distributions, median is the best estimate of central tendency. Hence, median travel time is proposed for calculating BTI. The difference in values of BTIs were evaluated when mean and median travel time were used. Travelers must add extra time to their average travel time to ensure on-time arrival. It was found that this extra time increases from 11% to 30% when median travel time is used as the average travel time compared to mean travel time for calculation of BTI.
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Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Apr 26, 2012
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Distribution functions
- Engineering fundamentals
- Freight transportation
- Gamma function
- Highway and road conditions
- Highway and road management
- Highway transportation
- Infrastructure
- Logistics
- Mathematical functions
- Mathematics
- Probability distribution
- Skewness
- Statistics
- Traffic engineering
- Transportation engineering
- Travel time
- Trip distribution
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