Determining factors affecting cross-border transport on King Fahd Causeway and comparison with urban travel

Abstract

Exogenous (non-traffic) factors, especially the economic conditions of the countries, may impact the cross-border travel demand. This study investigates the effects of non-traffic factors on border transport of the King Fahd Causeway. Moreover, a brief comparison is also provided with studies on urban traffic prediction. The historic stock market indices were used as an indicator of the economic and political conditions of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia which are joined by the Causeway. Stock market prices were found to have a statistically significant effect on the prediction models. Moreover, the other non-traffic parameters, including the weather (i.e. humidity) and the religious vacation period, also have a significant effect on the prediction models. Historic (time series) traffic data has been commonly used for urban travel. This is not the case for border travel where time series models may not be suitable because the changes in political and economic conditions may have an unprecedented change in travel demand. The use of economic parameters has not been found in the prediction studies for urban traffic. It was found that the model with only non-traffic parameters can predict daily traffic with approximately 85% accuracy on the validation datasets and can be used if time-series is not available or impractical to use.