Abstract
Presented in this paper is an investigation of the impact of cold and snow on daily traffic volumes of total traffic and passenger cars. It is based on a detailed case study of five years of Weigh-In-Motion data recorded continuously at a highway site in Alberta, Canada. Dummy-variable regression models are used to relate daily traffic volumes with snowfall and categorized cold variables. The importance of all the independent variables used in the model are established by conducting tests of statistical significance. The total traffic and passenger car volumes are influenced by both the snowfall and the cold categories. Plots of the partial effect of each independent variable on the dependent variable are generated. It is found that a daily snowfall of 10 cm may cause a 25% reduction in the daily volume of passenger cars, and temperatures below -25°C may reduce the passenger car volumes by 10% or more. It is believed that the developed traffic-weather models of this study can benefit highway agencies in developing more advanced imputation method or identifying weather adjustment factors for accurate estimation of AADT from short duration traffic counts.
Highlights
Traffic volumes vary over time and locations on all roadways
Their study and other similar studies published in the literature were conducted solely on the basis of total traffic volume data which is collected from permanent traffic counters (PTCs), including a mix of passenger cars and trucks
The main purpose of this study is to investigate the variations of daily traffic volumes of total traffic and passenger car vehicle classes separately with winter weather conditions
Summary
Traffic volumes vary over time and locations on all roadways. Even if traffic streams are investigated for the same time and location, the variations of traffic volumes could differ substantially with weather conditions. None of the past studies in the literature provided detailed information regarding traffic patterns of total traffic and passenger cars separately in relation to the time of day, day of the week, season of the year, type of roadway, and severity of weather. Such a study could be very useful for transportation analyses for such purposes as the structural design of pavement, geometric design, highway life cycle analysis, project prioritization, and to develop traffic simulation models
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