An investigation of traffic speed distributions for uninterrupted flow at blackspot locations in a mixed traffic environment

Abstract

Modelling traffic characteristics is the foundation for resolving various traffic and transportation issues. Among them, traffic speed has a significant impact on roadway crashes at blackspot (BS) locations. Speed is a random variable; several studies have recommended normal distribution to characterize the distribution of traffic speed for uninterrupted flow. However, a mixed-traffic situation causes heterogeneity, and the distribution of speeds deviates from the normal distribution. The present study investigates the distributions of traffic speeds for uninterrupted flow at 18 blackspot locations and individual vehicle types in mixed-traffic environments. Seven distribution models, namely Normal, Lognormal, Gamma, Logistic, Weibull, Burr, and Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), are considered to determine the speed characteristics. Different parametric distribution models are fitted to the vehicular speeds using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) methods. Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS), Anderson-Darling (AD), and two penalized criteria, i.e., Akaike and Bayesian Information Criteria (AIC and BIC), are used as goodness-of-fit (GoF) measures to find the best-fitting distribution. The overall suitability of each predicted distribution is also determined using a novel ranking method. The test findings suggest that GEV and Burr are the most suitable empirical speed distributions, with GEV fitting best above 96%. When the heavy vehicle composition (truck, bus, and tractor) is below 10%, 10–14%, 15–20%, and above 20%, it follows the Weibull, Gamma, GEV, and Burr distributions, respectively, in a mixed traffic environment.