Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to develop and apply an analytic procedure that estimates the amount of traffic congestion (vehicle hours of delay) that is caused by different types of accidents that occur on urban freeways, as well as to develop a model for prediction of real-time accident information such as how long an accident will affect traffic congestion and to the extent of the traffic congestion. Although it has been speculated that non-recurrent congestion caused by accidents, disabled vehicles, spills, weather events, and visual distractions accounts for one-half to three-fourths of the total congestion on metropolitan freeways, there are insufficient data to either confirm or deny this conjecture. The first part of this dissertation develops a method to separate the non-recurrent delay from any recurrent delay that is present on the road at the time and place of a reported accident, in order to estimate the contribution of non-recurrent delay caused by the specific accident. The procedure provides a foundation for a forecasting model that will assist transportation agencies such as Caltrans to allocate resources in the most effective way to mitigate the effects of those accidents that are likely to result in the greatest amount of delay. Additionally, since freeway travelers may be able to alter their driving routes based on the real-time accident information, the forecasting model may reduce traffic congestion and the incidence of secondary accidents. Since a number of estimated delay results were censored by time and/or space boundary conditions, general statistical approaches were not available. An approach based on survival analysis was applied to analyze estimated delay and to predict traffic congestion impact in terms of time and space. Specifically, a statistical model based on the Cox type proportional hazard analysis is estimated that describes non-recurrent delay as a function of day of week, time of day, weather, and observable (e.g., from emergency calls and/or aerial or on-scene observation) characteristics of the accident. These accident characteristics, which are available to Freeway Traffic Management Systems, include time of day, number of involved vehicles, whether a truck is involved, and collision location (by lane or side of road). This statistical model can be used to inform a manager as to the expected delay associated with an accident as soon as the accident is reported and its characteristics are observed. This can in turn be used in improving resource allocation. Additionally, this dissertation develops three prediction models regarding the spatiotemporal impact caused by a traffic accident as well as an accident duration model based on AFT metric model. Information provided by such predictions can play an important role in public sector transportation agencies providing freeway travelers with real-time traffic information under incident conditions.