Novel Approach for Calibrating Freeway Highway Multi-Regimes Fundamental Diagram

Abstract

For almost a century, several models have been developed to calibrate the pairwise relationship between traffic flow variables, that is, speed, density, and flow. Multi-regime models are well known for being superior over single-regime models in fitting the speed–density relationship. However, in modeling multi-regime models, breakpoints that separate the regimes are visually established based on the subjective judgment of data characteristics. Thus, this study proposes a data-driven approach to estimate the breakpoints of multi-regime models. It applies the Bayesian model for calibrating multi-regime models (two and three-regime models) for fitting traffic flow fundamental diagram. Furthermore, the analysis presented accounts for the random characteristics associated with the flow. To demonstrate the application of the proposed algorithm, traffic flow data from Interstate 10 (I-10) freeway in Jacksonville, Florida, were used in the analysis. The results demonstrate the potential benefit of using the proposed model in calibrating the fundamental diagram. The proposed approach can also quantify uncertainty and encode prior knowledge about the breakpoints in the model if the model developer wishes.