Graduation Year

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.C.E.

Degree Granting Department

Civil Engineering

Major Professor

Jian Lu, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Pan Liu, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Edward Mierzejewski, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Pei-Sung Lin, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Manjriker Gunaratne, Ph.D.

Keywords

AADT, Linear regression, Social economy, Traffic count, Database

Abstract

In the first part, this thesis performed a study to compile and compare current procedures or methodologies for the estimation of traffic volumes on the roads where traffic counts are not easily available. In the second part, linear regression was practiced as an AADT estimation process, which was primarily based on known or accepted AADT values on the neighboring state and local roadways, population densities and other social/economic data.

To develop AADT prediction models for estimating AADT values, two different types of database were created, including a social economic database and a roadway characteristics database. Ten years social economic data, from 1995 to 2005 were collected for each of the 67 counties in the state of Florida, and a social economic database was created by manually imputing data obtained from different resources into the social economic database. The roadway characteristics database was created by joining different GIS data layers to the Tele Atlas base map provided by Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT).

Stepwise regression method was used to select variables that will be included into the final models. All selected independent variables in the models are statistically significant with a 90% level of confidence. In total, six linear regression models were built. The adjusted R2 values of the AADT prediction models vary from 0.166 to 0.418. Model validation results show that the MAPE values of the AADT prediction models vary from 31.99% to 159.49%. The model with the lowest MAPE value is found to be the minor state/county highway model for rural area. The model with the highest MAPE value is found to be the local street model for large metropolitan area. In general, minor state/county highway models provide more reasonable AADT estimates as compared to the local street model in terms of the lower MAPE values.

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