Examination of Factors Affecting the Frequency, Response Time, and Clearance Time of Incidents on Freeways
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Wayne State University DigitalCommons@WayneState Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2010 Examination Of Factors Affecting The rF equency, Response Time, And Clearance Time Of Incidents On Freeways Indrajit Ghosh Wayne State University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Recommended Citation Ghosh, Indrajit, "Examination Of Factors Affecting The rF equency, Response Time, And Clearance Time Of Incidents On Freeways" (2010). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 162. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. EXAMINATION OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE FREQUENCY, RESPONSE TIME, AND CLEARANCE TIME OF INCIDENTS ON FREEWAYS by INDRAJIT GHOSH DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2010 MAJOR: CIVIL ENGINEERING Approved by: ______________________________ Advisor Date ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ © COPYRIGHT BY INDRAJIT GHOSH 2010 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION To my lovely parents, affectionate brother, and beautiful wife for their unconditional love without which it was not possible to achieve this goal in my life ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to acknowledge my sincerest gratitude to my advisor Dr. Peter Tarmo Savolainen for his constant support, invaluable guidance and constructive criticism throughout the research. It has been a privilege working with him. I would like to acknowledge the support of my esteemed dissertation committee members Dr. Timothy Gates, Dr. Snehamay Khasnabis, and Dr. Alper Murat during various stages of the dissertation. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr. William H. Greene, Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University, for his prompt responses to my enquiries regarding the statistical modeling work using LIMDEP 9. I am grateful to Suhartha Chowdhury for putting constant hard effort in the process of developing the software interface required as a part of this research. I am thankful to my friends and colleagues - Eric Andersen, Renardo Bezati, Johnny Chee, Daniel Cook, Samantha Cook, Dr. Abhishek Das, Kakan Dey, Lia Grillo, Shahinul Haque, Athira Jayadevan, Teja Karra, Jacquelyn Kawa, Bryan Kennedy, Adam Lacey, Mark Mathews, Stephan Maxe, Kishan Patel, Jason Pittenger, Brendan Russo, Jennifer Schalk, Kshitij Sharma, Anthony Vitti, and Sindhura Vuyyuru for their company, valuable help and constant encouragement throughout my graduate studies in Wayne State University. iii I graciously acknowledge the support of Alexander Prysiazniuk, Junior Traffic Engineer at URS Corporation for providing the Michigan Department of Transportation Freeway Courtesy Patrol data required for this research. I would like to thank NEXTRANS University Transportation Center at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana and U.S. Department of Transportation for providing the financial support to conduct this study. I would like to thank Dr. Tapan K. Datta, the Director of Wayne State University Transportation Research Group, for his constant guidance and invaluable direction throughout my graduate studies in Wayne State University. I would like to express my sincere admiration to the Wayne State University Transportation Research Group (WSUTRG) and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering for providing me financial support during my graduate studies. My stay in the campus of Wayne State University has been wonderful because of friends like Shafiul Azam, Vedanth Basappa, Rahul Bhattacharya, Dr. Dinesh Devaraj, Saikat Dey, Dr. Sanjib Gogoi, Indrajyoti Indra, Pradeep Kumar, Dr. Sabyasachee Mishra, Vishal Rachmale, and many many others. And last but not the least, I would like to thank Ms. Liz Luzsinski for being so careful about us, the students in the WSUTRG. Thank you all for being a part of my life. iv PREFACE The objective of this research is to assess freeway operations in metropolitan Detroit, particularly as it relates to traffic incidents. A software interface has been developed to combine traffic flow data with incident data available from various sources. A framework is proposed to analyze the relationship between traffic incidents and the resultant congestion, as well as to identify important factors that impact the frequency of incidents and the time required by Freeway Courtesy Patrol (FCP) operators to respond and clear such incidents on various freeway sections. The developed framework is evaluated using data obtained from four freeways in southeastern Michigan. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ....................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iii Preface ............................................................................................................................ v Table of Contents ............................................................................................................vi List of Tables ...................................................................................................................ix List of Figures ..................................................................................................................xi List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Background and motivation .................................................................................... 1 1.2 Problem statement and research objectives ........................................................ 10 1.3 Organization of the research ................................................................................ 12 Chapter 2 State-of-the-Art Literature Review ............................................................ 13 2.1 Past research on congestion caused by incidents and incident frequency .......... 13 2.2 Past research on the incident duration analysis ................................................... 16 2.3 Summary .............................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 3 Data for Study Area ................................................................................... 24 3.1 Traffic.com Traffic Flow Data ............................................................................... 25 3.2 MDOT Traffic Flow Data ...................................................................................... 27 3.3 Freeway Courtesy Patrol (FCP) Data ................................................................... 28 Chapter 4 Methodology .............................................................................................. 30 4.1 Task 1 – Development of a software interface ..................................................... 30 4.2 Task 2 - Preparation of a sample database for preliminary analyses ................... 34 4.3 Task 3 – Identification of incident occurrence, response, and clearance times .... 36 4.4 Task 4 – Development of a preliminary incident clearance model ....................... 40 4.4.1 Hazard-based duration model ........................................................................ 41 vi 4.4.2 Fully parametric models ................................................................................. 45 4.4.3 Comparisons of fully parametric models ........................................................ 48 4.4.4 Heterogeneity ................................................................................................ 49 4.4.5 Semiparametric models ................................................................................. 50 4.5 Task 5 - Extraction of data for larger models ....................................................... 52 4.6 Task 6 - Development of larger incident duration model ...................................... 58 4.7 Task 7 - Examination of model transferability ...................................................... 59 4.7.1 Spatial transferability ..................................................................................... 59 4.7.2 Likelihood ratio test ........................................................................................ 59 4.8 Task 8 - Development of count data model for incident frequency ...................... 61 4.8.1 Poisson regression model.............................................................................. 62 4.8.2 Negative binomial model ............................................................................... 63 4.9 Calculation of Elasticities ..................................................................................... 64 Chapter 5 Results and Discussions .......................................................................... 67 5.1 Results of incident clearance duration model ....................................................... 68 5.1.1 Preliminary incident clearance model ............................................................ 68 5.1.1.1 Fully parametric