Spatio-temporal Analysis and Visualisation of Incident Induced Traffic Congestion Using Real Time Online Routing Information: A Case Study of Fremantle South, Perth, Western Australia

摘要

Traffic congestion triggered by incidents is extremely challenging because of its random occurrence. Incident Induced Traffic Congestion (IITC) usually refers to a form of non-recurrent congestion, which can be measured based on travel time variation after an incident has occurred. This study aims to analyze the spatio-temporal pattern of travel time variation induced by incidents using a case study of Fremantle South, Western Australia. The travel time data and information were collected from the TOMTOM online routing system through TOMTOM API. Around ninety-nine origin-destination (O-D) pairs were generated and geocoded to collect travel time information in three different periods, i.e., morning peak (7:00 am to 9:00 am), evening peak (4:00 pm to 6:00 pm) and off peak (1:00 am to 3:00 am) for six months from March 15, 2016 until September 15, 2016. Simultaneously, around 1047 records of incident location information have been collected in the vicinity of the study area. To understand the road network performance, travel time variation and delay were estimated using the Travel Time Index (TTI) measure. The spatial and temporal pattern of travel time variations were analyzed and visualized using specialized geo-spatial tools and techniques. The paper displays the spatial and temporal pattern of IITC in different circumstances that can be used for better traffic management and planning. An attempt will be made to generate various IITC scenarios using Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and techniques. These scenarios may be used for further research to understand the behaviour of road networks due to the occurrence of incidents for the development of congestion mitigation strategies.