Forecasting and Delivery of Highway Travel Time Reliability Information

The purpose of this Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) project was to assess the feasibility of an innovative way of delivering personalized travel time reliability information directly to drivers. A period of research and planning established the foundation for the development, demonstration and field trial of the IDEA Product produced by this project, which is a working prototype of a forecasting service that predicts travel time for a given route based on both historical patterns and current conditions, including incidents, weather, and work zones. The IDEA Product manifested itself as a web site (MyRoadTripAdvisor.com) where visitors could use a planning tool to obtain travel time reliability forecasts for the current date and up to five days into the future. Registered users could save frequent trips by name, and optionally request the service to “push” travel time forecasts to them by email, text message or phone call in advance of their planned departure time, giving them the option to take an alternate route, work at home, etc., should their trip be forecasted to take longer than expected. The IDEA Product is unique in that it was designed to give drivers actionable intelligence in the form of travel time reliability predictions, offering them the possibility of avoiding congestion and its inevitable travel delays. While restricted to portions of I-66 in Northern Virginia by the limited scope of this project, the concept is applicable to any congestion-prone corridor. Innovation was demonstrated in this project in the areas of business processes and practices, travel time reliability forecasting methodology, and technology integration. Demonstrations and a field trial of the service established the technical and business feasibility of the concept. This IDEA project created an extensible service framework that can be expanded in follow-on projects to provide metro-wide network coverage, and be integrated into travel information systems operated by state departments of transportation or commercial enterprises.