Guidelines for Defining and Measuring Urban Congestion

Traffic congestion has become a major challenge in most urban areas. In recent years, the development of measures to mitigate traffic congestion has become a priority task for many road agencies. The objectives of the guidelines were to develop approaches for defining and measuring traffic congestion and identifying performance measures (indices) to quantify congestion as well as to provide guidance on how to use different data sources for measuring congestion and presenting traffic congestion information. The identification of congestion and its characteristics was the first step towards selecting appropriate mitigation measures. Based on the findings of the literature and jurisdictional survey, traffic congestion was defined and a range of performance metrics to measure and monitor traffic congestion were identified. The long list of indices adopted from the literature was evaluated against a number of criteria. The document provides a correlation matrix to assist practitioners in selecting the appropriate data collection method for measuring congestion in different applications. The guidelines also provide recommendations for selecting various tools to present congestion indices as well as a decision support tool to assist users in selecting the most appropriate congestion indices, data collection techniques, and visualization tools for their applications.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)

  401-1111 Prince of Wales Drive
  Ottawa, Ontario  Canada 
• Authors:
  • Hadayeghi, A
  • IZADPANAH, P
  • Salek, S
  • Omrani, R
  • Hellinga, B
• Publication Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Pagination: 1 v., viii+144p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Evaluation; Information processing; Mathematical analysis; Measurement; Methodology; Statistics; Traffic congestion; Urban areas; Visualization
• ITRD Terms: 6471: Analysis (math); 632: Congestion (traffic); 8623: Data acquisition; 8655: Data processing; 9020: Evaluation (assessment); 6136: Measurement; 9102: Method; 6555: Statistics; 313: Urban area; 9151: Visualisation
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01668491
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)
• Files: ITRD, TAC
• Created Date: May 3 2018 3:17PM