Novel estimation method of community AADT and VMT via circuit network models and simulation

Abstract

Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) of traffic network are very important data for the plan and decision making. How to estimate AADT and VMT on local area roads is a long-time existing problem due to lack of traffic monitor counts. This paper presents a novel approach to the community area AADT and VMT estimation by developing circuit network model and simulation to solve this difficult problem for community local traffic network roads. The circuit network model is developed based on the community traffic network, and has three sub-models combined by the least squares method (LSM). These sub-models respectively represent even, local and separate distributions of the entrance traffic flows among households in a community. The method is well validated by sampled measurement data and circuit network simulation results. In addition, it is discovered that the total entrance traffic amount is strongly related to the total number of households in communities. Thus, it makes the new method feasible to estimate the AADT and VMT on community local area roads even without any measurement in future. The proposed method not only can provide accurate estimate, but also can dramatically reduce the labor load and cost of traffic counts.