Congestion Quantification Using the National Performance Management Research Data Set

Traffic congestion is a serious urban transportation problem, compounded by the fact that demand for travel grows all the time. Monitoring of transportation system performance is a key part of any transportation operation and planning strategy and depends on the estimation of performance measures generated from analysis of large amounts of traffic data. This thesis focused on analyses of travel time data using the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham travel time database. The goal of this research was to develop an automated process to utilize the National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS) for generating performance measures for congestion monitoring applications. The Birmingham region was used as a test bed in a case study to demonstrate how NPMRDS data can be used to determine the extent of congestion along four main corridors (I20, I65, I59, I20/59) over space and time. The capabilities of the relational database management system (RDBMS) are employed in order to manage the large amounts of data. Powerful visual maps were developed by GIS software that helped to identify areas of congestion and illustrate congestion extent and severity.;The thesis describes the NPMRDS characteristics and the factors that affect data measurements and discusses ways to address issues related to the data such as data gaps and anomalies. The case study demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed methodology. Overall, this research showcases the use of NPMRDS database to understand congestion patterns and provides insights into travel time uncertainty in urban areas such as the Birmingham metropolitan region.