TMC Traffic Data Automation for MnDOT's Traffic Monitoring Program

Project summary:

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) has been responsible for collecting, analyzing and publishing traffic count from the various roadway systems throughout the state. The traffic reporting system mainly developed by the Traffic Forecasting and Analysis Section (TFAS) of Mn/DOT has been used in several federal programs, internal Mn/DOT applications and many private sectors. The objective of this project was to continue the TFAS' automation efforts by automating the TMC portion of traffic data (ITS generated data) contributed to the Mn/DOT's Traffic Monitoring System. The focus was given to develop an Internet based system that produces computerized reports on continuous and short-duration count data. One of the challenges of utilizing ITS generated traffic data for computing continuous and short-duration count was in dealing with missing and incorrect data produced by faulty conditions of traffic data collection systems including detectors and communication links. This study found that data imputation techniques based on spatial and temporal inferences of traffic flow can overcome the difficulties and produce accurate statistical data. The final project report describes the details on actual implementation of the algorithms developed, analysis utilities and practical system integration examples. One unresolved issue in this project was dealing with the stations in which nearly no data is available for the entire year, which was observed from 2-3% of the short-duration count stations. This problem is left for future work.