Comparative Analysis and Assessment of States’ Traffic Management Center Programs

Ardeshir Faghri,Abebaw Berihun,Michael L Vaughan

doi:10.4236/jtts.2021.112015

Abstract

This research presents a step-by-step guideline for traffic data collection standards set by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). This study reviews manual and automatic methods of traffic counting and provides detailed information on traffic volume and vehicle classification studies. This research also provides a detailed analysis of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT)-TMC (Transportation Management Center) websites and compares it to selected Department of Transportation websites of other states such as Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Texas, and Virginia. The purpose of the comparison is to analyze the data sources; user friendliness, accessibility, types of data available, presentation formats, and style for each state to determine how they compared to DelDOT-TMC. Although there were some similarities, the findings suggest that two major differences are present. The overall results revealed that DelDOT-TMC provides limited traffic and roadway weather data, and presentation formats to the public as compared to the other states. Further, a unitless variable, called the Capacity Factor (Q), has been developed within this study to represent this relative comparison. This study shows that DelDOT TMC performs well within the group of selected states and better than selected states of similar size and most selected states of larger size; where only Virginia performs better then DelDOT TMC. DelDOT TMC does not perform as well as selected neighboring states; however, it performs in an acceptable range relative to neighboring states.

Highlights

Due to the population increase throughout the United States, transportation networks are congested daily, especially in morning and afternoon peak hours [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
This research provides a detailed analysis of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT)-TMC (Transportation Management Center) websites and compares it to selected Department of Transportation websites of other states such as Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Texas, and Virginia
This study shows that DelDOT TMC performs well within the group of selected states and better than selected states of similar size and most selected states of larger size; where only Virginia performs better DelDOT TMC

Summary

Introduction

Due to the population increase throughout the United States, transportation networks are congested daily, especially in morning and afternoon peak hours [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. DelDOT-TMC is responsible for collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating traffic and roadway weather data to the public. It provides real-time travel information to allow the public to make informed decisions concerning travel route, travel time, and modal choice. The ITE manual provides various types of traffic studies, which includes volume, spot speed, travel-time and delay, intersection and driveway, inventories, traffic access and impact, parking, traffic accident, traffic conflict, pedestrian, traffic control device, public transportation, goods movement, and queuing [25]. According to AASHTO Guidelines for Traffic Data Program, there are four essential types of traffic studies that are collected by TMC: volume counts, classification counts, speed data, and weight data.

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion