Dr. Thomas M. Brennan Jr., P.E., Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, presented research at the Moving Active Transportation to Higher Ground: Opportunities for Accelerating the Assessment of Health Impacts conference in Washington D.C. The conference, sponsored by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, brought together experts and constituents from transportation, urban planning, public health, health care, and health economics to explore the public health outcomes of active transportation. Dr. Brennan’s research focused on characterizing highway travel time delay by anonymous probe vehicle data, with a particular focus on Interstate 80. His abstract, as well as pictures from his research and the event, are included below.
Abstract:
Anonymous probe vehicle data are currently being collected on roadways throughout the United States. This data is collected through cell phones and other wireless devices. Defined highway segments called Traffic Message Channels (TMCs) are joined with probe vehicle speed data. Through the analysis of these data, transportation agencies have been developing agency-wide travel time performance measures. One widely accepted performance measure is travel time reliability, which is calculated along a series of TMCs. When reliable travel times are not achieved because of crash incidents and recurring congestion, it is desirable to understand the time and location of these occurrences to proactively manage the corridor. This research emphasizes a visually intuitive methodology that aggregates a series of TMC segments based on a cursory review of congestion hot spots within a corridor. An analysis of approximately 90-million speed records collected in 2013 along I-80 in northern New Jersey was performed for this project. The Travel Time along 70 miles of I-80 was calculated for 166 TMC segments. Further research is being conducted on 2014 data.
