Measuring Traffic

Measuring Traffic

Report Number
664
Authors
Peter Bickel, Chao Chen, Jaimyoung Kwon, John Rice, Erik van Zwet and Pravin Varaiya
Abstract

A traffic performance measurement system, PeMS, currently functions as a statewide repository for traffic data gathered by thousands of automatic sensors. It has integrated data collection, processing, and communications infrastructure with data storage and analytical tools. In this paper, we discuss statistical issues that have emerged as we attempt to process a data stream of two GB per day of wildly varying quality. In particular, we focus on detecting sensor malfunction, imputation of missing or bad data, estimation of velocity, and forecasting of travel times on freeway networks.

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