Estimation of vehicle trajectories and travel times on urban expressway from traffic counts

The estimation model of travel times which considers the time and spatial transition of traffic flow is proposed to improve the travel time estimates even under quickly-changing traffic condition. The proposed model estimates vehicle trajectories and travel times simultaneously from traffic counts and is suitable even when traffic congestion occurs. The verification of the model was conducted with traffic counts observed on Nagoya Expressway. As a result, travel times were estimated more accurately by the proposed model than the traditional models, especially, when there was traffic congestion.