Abstract:
A primary concern in forecasting traffic volumes to support highway bypass infrastructure improvements, when proposed for a small community, is the quantification of external traffic on approach roadways. Essentially, the question transportation professionals are trying to answer is how many vehicles are destined for town versus vehicles solely passing through the town. The current methods for calculating the external traffic include conducting an origin-destination study or applying existing regression equations. This paper's objective is to examine the possibility of using spatial economic models to predict the external traffic values. This paper applies two spatial economic models to predict the external traffic for three small communities in Alabama, and compares the model results against a cordon-line origin-destination study. The paper identifies the model providing external traffic volumes that best replicate the observed external traffic in the case study cities and makes recommendations regarding the various models and their ability to forecast external traffic.
