A comparative study between private- sector and automated vehicle identification system data through various travel time reliability measures

Abstract

Traffic data from private-sector sources is increasingly used to estimate the travel time reliability of major road infrastructure. However, there is as yet no study evaluating the difference in estimating travel time reliability between the private-sector data and automated vehicle identification (AVI) based on radio frequency identification. As ground truth data, the AVI data were collected from an AVI system using toll tags and aggregated into five-minute intervals. As one of the representative traffic information providers, data from HERE was obtained through the Regional Integrated Traffic Information System, calculated in five-minute intervals. For the comparison, four kinds of measures were selected and estimated on the basis of the day of the week, specific time periods, and time of day in five-minute, 15-minute, and one-hour intervals. The statistical difference in travel time reliability was assessed through paired t-tests. According to the results, AVI and HERE data are comparable based on day of the week, specific time periods, and time of day at one-hour intervals, whereas at five-minute and 15-minute intervals, HERE and AVI data are not generally comparable. Thus, when estimating travel time reliability in real time, travel time reliability derived from HERE data may be different from the true travel time reliability. Considering that private-sector traffic data are currently used to estimate travel time reliability measures, the measures should be harmonized on the basis of robust statistics to provide more consistent measures related to the true travel time reliability. © National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2018.