Potential Freeway Congestion Severity Measure: Impact of Continuous Congestion Patterns
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 135, Issue 5
Abstract
To better understand the characteristics of traffic congestion and efficiently employ congestion measures for interstate highway systems, this study examined the limitations of the congestion measures currently in use such as the percent of congestion and the duration of continuous congestion. Based on this study, these congestion measures provided different results of the congestion severity for even the same interstate highway segment, which means that the use of a single measure might not give a reliable evaluation result. In order to minimize the potential bias and enhance the advantage of each congestion measure, this study proposed a composite congestion severity measure by combining congestion information of both percent of congestion and duration of continuous congestion measures. The writers found that the proposed composite congestion severity measure efficiently identified the levels of the congestion severity of interstate highway segments and that it could be instantly accomplished with the existing loop detector count systems in most states. This proposed measure may be a potential candidate for describing levels of congestion severity and can provide a proper guideline for transportation engineers or decision makers to efficiently allocate available budget and resources to correct applicable interstate segments.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers thank Ralph Jones, Michael Nichols, Michael Clements, Larry Caldwell, and Tien Simmons of Traffic Engineering Division in the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) for their oversight and discussion over the course of this study. The writers also thank VDOT’s traffic monitoring section, managed by Tom Schinkel, who made the data used in this study available. The contents of this paper reflect the views of the writers, who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein, and do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
References
Borden, J. (1993). “Statewide highway congestion monitoring program.” HICOMP Rep., California Dept. of Transportation, Sacramento, Calif.
California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). (2003). Information memorandum: Year 2002 Bay Area freeway congestion data, Oakland, Calif.
Colman, S. B. (2007). “Predicting the duration of congestion on Bay Area freeway.” Dowling Associates, Inc., ⟨http://www.dowlinginc.com/publications.php⟩ (June 2007).
Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). (2004). Congestion relief program guidelines, Division of Transportation Development, Colo., ⟨http://www.cotrip.org/its/whitepapers/architecture/Final_Congestion_Relief_Guidelines_August_25_2004.pdf⟩ (Oct. 2007).
Cottrell, W. D. (1991). “Measurement of the extent and duration of freeway congestion in urbanized areas.” Proc., ITE 61st Annual Meeting, ITE, Washington, D.C.
Federal Highway Administration (FHwA). (2007). Freeway management and operation handbook, Chap. 4, Performance monitoring and evaluation, ⟨http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freewaymgmt/publications/frwy_mgmt_handbook/chapter4_02.htm⟩ (Oct. 2007).
Flannery, A., McLeod, D., and Pedersen, N. J. (2006). “Customer-based measures of level of service.” ITE J., 76(5), 17–21.
Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). (2007). Defining and locating congestion area. Georgia’s congestion relief program, ⟨http://www.dot.state.ga.us/SpecialSubjects/fastforward/define.shtml⟩ (Oct. 2007).
Gunawardena, N. R., Sinha, K. C., and Fricker, J. D. (1996). “Development of peak-hour and peak directional factors for congestion management systems.” Transportation Research Record. 1552, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 8–18.
Lindley, J. A. (1986). “Quantification of urban freeway congestion and analysis of remedial measures.” Rep. No. FHWA/RD-87/052, FHwA, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.
Lisco, T. E. (1983). “A procedure for predicting queues and delays on expressways in urban core areas.” CTPS Technical Rep. No. 36, Central Transportation Planning Staff, Boston.
Lomax, T., et al. (1997). NCHRP Rep. 398: Quantifying Congestion, Volume 2: User’s Guide, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP). (2003). Performance measure of operational effectiveness for highway segments and systems: A synthesis of highway practice, Synthesis 313, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C.
Northern Virginia Transportation Coordinating Council (TCC). (2007). “Northern Virginia 2020 transportation plan.” Summary Rep., ⟨http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/resources/NOVA-20_20Plan_summ_rpt.pdf⟩ (Oct. 2007).
Ozbay, K., Yasar, I., and Kachroo, P. (2004). “Comprehensive evaluation of feedback-based freeway ramp-metering strategy by using microscopic simulation: Taking ramp queues into account.” Transportation Research Record. 1867, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 89–96.
Schrank, D., and Lomax, T. (2003). The 2003 Annual Urban Mobility Rep. No., Texas Transportation Institute, Texas A&M Univ. System, College Station, Tex.
Schrank, D. L., Turner, S. M., and Lomax, T. J. (1994). “Trends in urban roadway congestion-1982 to 1991: Vol. 1.” Annual Rep. Research Rep. No. 1131-6, Texas Transportation Institute, College Station, Tex.
Skabardonis, A., Varaiya, P., and Petty, K. (2003). “Measuring recurrent and non-recurrent traffic congestion.” Proc., Transportation Research Board (CD-ROM), TRB, Washington, D.C.
Stathopoulos, A., and Karlaftis, M. G. (2002). “Modeling duration of urban traffic congestion.” J. Transp. Eng., 128(6), 587–590.
Thurgood, G. S., and Taylor, T. J. (1994). “Strategies to reduce recurring interstate congestion: A freeway congestion index (FCI).” Rep. No. UT-94.06, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, Utah.
Vaziri, M. (2002). “Development of highway congestion index with fuzzy set models.” Transportation Research Record. 1802, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 16–22.
Transportation Research Board (TRB). (2000), Highway capacity manual, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
Washington Dept. of Transportation (WDOT). (2007). Puget Sound Freeway and HOV performance statistics, ⟨http://depts.washington.edu/hov/Readme/FwyPerformance⟩ (June 2007).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 135 • Issue 5 • May 2009
Pages: 316 - 321
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: May 27, 2008
Accepted: Oct 5, 2008
Published online: May 1, 2009
Published in print: May 2009
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.