CEAT researchers look to improve efficiency of traffic count in Oklahoma

CEAT researchers look to improve efficiency of traffic count in Oklahoma 

Monday, December 2, 2024

Media Contact: Tanner Holubar | Communications Specialist | 405-744-2065 | [email protected]

College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology researchers are working on a project to improve the accuracy of traffic counts on Oklahoma's roadways.  

Dr. Joshua Li, associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the leader on the project funded by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.  

Federal law mandates that the Highway Performance Monitoring System is used to provide comprehensive data about roadways in the country. States are required to submit a report annually to the Federal Highway Administration detailing the conditions of roadways as well as how many vehicles traveled them on an average basis.  

Dr. Joshua Li discusses a piece of equipment used to monitor roadways in his laboratory.

The challenge of these reports is in collecting data. Since several factors affect the number of vehicles traveling on certain days, such as time of day and day of week, two different count lengths are used for more accurate data collection. 

There are short-term counts, such as monitoring a roadway for 24-48 hours for the number of vehicles traveling on it, and continuous counts, which are set up to monitor a roadway 24/7, 365 days a year.

"In any region or state, there are so many roads that we have limited resources to collect the data," Li said. "And we want to understand how many vehicles are on the road. The number of vehicles is going to impact mobility, safety and emissions." 

There are also differences in how the data is collected. Oklahoma City's data may differ from that of ODOT, resulting in different outcomes.  

Li's project will evaluate the HPMS and provide recommendations on what changes can be made to improve the overall comprehensiveness of the datasets. The team will focus on how many data collection sites are needed and the difference in the data collected at each site. He said there are several thousand short-count sites and around 250 continuous-count sites. 

Continuous sites operate year-round and are set up throughout the state to collect a variety of traffic data.  

"All of those data site collections are costly," Li said. "Another purpose of the project is to find some of the newer technologies but at a lower cost." 

The project will start with a review of the HPMS traffic data collection process, as well as a review of federal and state-level guidance that goes into the collection process.  

The team will then focus on determining how efficient the HPMS data collection process is in Oklahoma. They will look to identify any insufficiencies in the data while focusing on high-traffic corridors, major intersections and growing areas.  

Another goal is to determine how effective the traffic count data sampling methods are. The team hopes to be able to address any gaps in the HPMS program and make recommendations on how to improve it.  

Dr. Joshua Li

Due to government organizations collecting their own traffic data for their respective regions, there can be differences from the data that ODOT collects. There can also be areas where efforts are being duplicated, or where data is collected by two organizations from the same area.

To enhance the coverage of the data as well as improve the accuracy and reduce duplication, Li's team will also work with local government organizations and other entities that collect traffic data.  The team will try to incorporate the data collected by those agencies into the data collected by ODOT. They also hope to help foster consistent data-sharing efforts between organizations.  

The team will also look to determine if the locations for continuous traffic counts, which provide data for a range of several days, can also provide accurate data for a specific date range or for a range of just a few days.  

They also would like to determine that the continuous count locations represent a variety of regions and classifications of vehicles.  

Crowd-sourced data, such as GPS data from smartphones or from connected vehicles, is rich but the technology is not widely adopted enough to provide complete accuracy about the entire state's traffic count.  

The team will evaluate available technology and implement studies to determine if any new technology can help lessen the costs of collecting traffic data.  

"For the state level, we need to estimate what the accurate usage of a road is," Li said. "Then we can make determinations that can potentially impact decisions on how roads are maintained." 

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