The traffic estimates from short counts may contain a great deal of uncertainty due to the inherent traffic temporal variations. Short traffic count conducted in different seasons may result in different error values. There is no adjustment mechanism for truck type and axle weight variations in existing traffic monitoring systems. If pavements are designed based on traffic estimates from short counts, premature failures or over-design may result. This paper analyzes the impact of short traffic counts from different months on traffic loading estimates for pavement design. 48-hour vehicle classification counts from Saskatchewan highways are analyzed and ADT (average daily traffic), TP (truck percentage), and CM (content of the largest multi-trailer truck) are identified as significant parameters correlated to traffic loading ESAL (equivalent single axle load) per day. Short count samples of the three parameters are generated from continuous AVC (automated vehicle classifiers) counts to analyze the errors of short counts. For each parameter, the errors of two 48-hour counts from different months are found to be significantly lower than one count. The combined parameter error ranking for each month combination shows which month combination will provide short counts with smaller errors for the traffic parameters. Engineers should select proper time to conduct short counts. Certain flexibility can be exercised in design standard application and performance prediction.
Traffic Loading Accuracy as Affected by the Month of Short Traffic Counts
Second International Conference on Transportation and Traffic Studies (ICTTS ) ; 2000 ; Beijing, China
2000-07-12
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Traffic Loading Accuracy as Affected by the Month of Short Traffic Counts
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000
|Accuracy of annual traffic flow estimates from automatic counts
TIBKAT | 1979
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