The Influence of Adverse Weather Conditions on the Probability of Congestion on Dutch Motorways

Weather conditions are widely acknowledged to contribute to the occurrence of congestion on motorway traffic by influencing both traffic supply and traffic demand. However, to the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper that explicitly integrates supply and demand effects in predicting the influence of adverse weather conditions on congestion. Traffic demand is examined by conducting a stated adaptation experiment, in which changes in travel choices are observed under adverse weather scenarios. Based on these choices, a Panel Mixed Logit model is estimated. Supply effects are taking into account by examining the influence of precipitation on motorway capacity. Based on the Product Limit Method, capacity distribution functions are estimated for dry weather, light rain and heavy rain. The results show that rainfall leads to a significant increase in the probability of traffic breakdown at bottleneck locations. Remarkably it is predicted that probability of a breakdown is higher in light rain (86.7%) than in heavy rain (77.4%) conditions, which is the result of the increased traffic demand in light rain conditions. Based on the results presented in this paper, it is recommended to always incorporate both supply and demand effects in the predictions of motorway breakdown probabilities due to adverse weather conditions.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB45 Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • van Stralen, Wouter J H
  • Calvert, Simeon C
  • Molin, Eric J E
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Demand; Logits; Supply; Traffic congestion; Traffic forecasting; Weather conditions
• Geographic Terms: Netherlands
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I71: Traffic Theory; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01517526
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-2800
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 10 2014 9:23AM