MODELING GROWTH TREND AND FORECASTING TECHNIQUES FOR VEHICULAR POPULATION IN INDIA

Abstract

Forecasting and estimation of growth in vehicular population is a sine qua non of any major transportation engineering development. It requires capturing the past trend and using it to predict the future trend based on qualified assumptions, simulations and models created using explanatory variables. This work attempts to review the in vogue approaches and investigate a more contemporary approach, the Time Series (TS) Analysis. Three fundamentally different methods were explored and results from each of these analyses were collated to check for respective levels of accuracy in predicting vehicular population for the same target year. Within the scope of this study and estimation, results obtained from TS Analysis were found to be considerably more accurate than those from Trend Line Analysis and observably better than those from Econometric Analysis. To reinforce these observations and inferences drawn, a second set of analysis was done on more recent input by using AADT data from PeMS, California. Inter alia this was carried out to contrast any statistical improvement observed when doing TS analysis with rich and accurate data. With all the data sets used and locations analyzed for forecasting, the Time Series analysis technique was invariably found to be a potent tool for forecasting.