摘要: |
For highway maintenance and planning purposes, it is desirable to characterize each road segment by its traffic flow [such as the annual average daily traffic (AADT) and the AADT for each vehicle class], by the weight distribution of vehicles that travel on its roads [such as the annual average daily equivalent single axle loadings (ESAL) and the annual average daily weight per vehicle for each vehicle class]. As with almost any data collection effort, the monitoring data suffer from errors from many sources. This report summarizes results of a two year empirical research effort, which was sponsored by the Federal highway Administration, (i) to study and characterize the variability in the traffic data (volume, classification, and weight) from the continuously monitored road segments, and (ii) to study the extent to which this variability is transferred to, and affects the precision of the data produced form the road segments which are monitored only one or two days each year. The ultimate hope is not only that states will eventually be able to publish an estimate of a characteristic such as AADT for each road segment, but also that each estimate will be accompanied by a statement of how good the estimate is in terms of the estimated variability or precision which will likely be experienced as a coefficient of variation (i.e., the quotient of a standard deviation and a mean). This report provides highlights of research reported in five working papers. |