APPLICATION OF GPS IN TRAVEL TIME RELIABILITY FOR ARTERIAL ROAD -A CASE STUDY MUMBAI-PUNE HIGHWAY (URBAN SECTION)

Abstract

Travellers like short travel times. So, from the traveller’s perspective, it seems fair to use the mean travel time or mean speed in order to measure the traffic flow performance of a route. However, short travel times might not be the only aspect which is of importance to travellers. It is hypothesized that predictable travel times are also of value to travellers. Hence, the size of variation in travel times, or in other words, Travel Time Reliability (TTR) plays a role in the way that travellers judge the performance of a route, and it is likely that it influences the behaviour of travellers as well. When the mean travel time is used as an indicator for the performance of a route, no insight is gained into the size of the variation in travel times within the observed period.

The goal of this research is to study Travel Time Reliability in (Mumbai Pune Highway,urban section). Reasons for this research are: (a) it is hypothesized that TTR influences road user behaviour, and insight into this relation provides valuable information for road managers and traffic engineers in order to improve the performance of traffic networks, (b) the field of TTR is fairly unexplored territory, and (c) it is possible to perform extensive data analyses, due to the recent increase in travel time data collection possibilities. A literature survey is conducted to serve as a first step in reaching this goal. The literature study shows that there has not been much investigation into TTR in urban areas / arterial road. The reasons for this are that (a) generally, motorways are most equipped with instruments for data collection, and (b) urban environments are more difficult to investigate, because these have more complex traffic interactions than motorways. Another important conclusion from the literature research is that there are three levels of time frames on which TTR can be approached: inter-day, inter-period, and inter-vehicle. For this research, inter-day variations are observed, because deviations from a daily pattern will influence TTR from a road user perspective. Inter-period variations will be known by road users and inter-vehicle variations only have a small influence on travel times. Literature also shows that TTR is defined as: “The ability of the transport system to provide the expected level of service quality, upon which users have organized their activities.” This implies that a high TTR does not necessarily mean that travel times on a route are constant during a day, but that travel times that are experienced by road users are approximately equal to their expected travel times.

I have done TTR study on Mumbai Pune Highway, urban section. It is very important section of highway, which connects western India to Mumbai. Frequent congestion due to variation in traffic density, weather and timing is common. Study will help to mitigate congestion problem in the section.