An Integrated Data Approach for Constructing Arterial Shockwave Profiles

Shockwave profiles describe the traffic flow dynamics and contain comprehensive information of signal performance on arterial. Hence, the construction of shockwave profiles could be of great help to achieve more responsive and effective traffic signal operations. Previous work has made significant efforts to derive performance measures, such as queue length and travel time by constructing shockwave profiles. However, their successes and applications might be limited since they do not fully utilize multi-source data. This study proposes a method to construct shockwave profiles on arterials by integrating signal event-based and travel time data. The shockwave profiles were expressed by a simple LWR model with two unknown parameters using signal event-based data and calibrated by fitting field collected travel times to travel times generated by a virtual vehicle probe method. The proposed method was implemented as a test on State Route 189 at Nogales, Arizona. Based on the results, important conclusions include: (1) in the best fitting case, the MAPEs in travel times were approximate 14% and 18%; (2) an error resilient property was found by using both stop bar and advance detector data in the proposed method; (3) the visualization of shockwave profile can quickly provide information about the queue length and traffic conditions along an arterial. Comprehensive signal performance measurement was also readily applicable. By integrating multiple sources of data, the constructed shockwave profiles in this study were believed to be a more reliable and realistic representation of traffic dynamics compared to use a single source of data.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB45 Standing Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics.
• Authors:
  • An, Chengchuan
  • Kluger, Robert
  • Wu, Yao-Jan
  • Guo, Xiaoyu
  • Xia, Jingxin
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 7p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Arterial highways; Data analysis; Traffic data; Traffic flow; Traffic signals
• Uncontrolled Terms: Shockwave profiles
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01660323
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-05077
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 20 2018 9:27AM