Interstate Speed Profiles

Abstract

This paper draws the first set of high-level, national speed profiles for the entire Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (Interstate system) in the United States based on the 2016 year-long National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS) and a conflated NPMRDS-HPMS (Highway Performance Monitoring System) geospatial network. This set of quantitative profiles include: (a) national average speeds of 2016, (b) national average speed time of day variations, (c) national average speed day of week variations, (d) national average speed seasonal variations, and (e) state average speed and travel time distributions in peak hours. This work demonstrates that the integration of the private sector’s emerging big travel-time data and the public sector’s HPMS has provided a powerful resource to monitor travel-time-related performance of the nation’s highways. As the United States is transforming the Federal-aid Highway Program into a performance-based program with enhanced accountability and transparency, this integrated resource will help states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to monitor their performance and progress towards achieving targets, and enable the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) not only to draw high-level national highway performance profiles but also to pinpoint the exact where, when, and how much the challenges are.

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References

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