Examining Travel Time Variability and Reliability on an Urban Arterial Road Using Wi-Fi Detections- A Case Study

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine travel time variability and reliability on an urban arterial road. Towards this purpose, travel time data was collected using Wi-Fi sensors for fourweeks. Generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution was observed as the best-fitted distribution for explaining variations in travel time values. The variations in travel time werealso assessed by the time of the day (TOD) and day of the week (DOW). The results obtained indicate that travel time variation is significantly influenced by TOD and DOW. It was observed that buffer time index (BTI) explained variations in travel time better compared to other reliability parameters such as planning time index (PTI) and travel time index (TTI). As an important outcome, the study developed reliability-based level of service thresholds (LOS), which can enable traffic engineers to evaluate the performance of an urban arterial road based on travel time variability and reliability.