Citation

Fournier N, Farid YZ, Patire A. Transp. Res. Rec. 2023; 2677(3): 1593-1610.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/03611981221126515

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Quality data are vital to the planning and operation of traffic systems. High occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, for instance, must comply with federal performance standards. If an agency fails to meet the standards, the facility is considered to be ?degraded? and the agency is required to undertake actions that would return the facility to satisfactory operation. This could include removing exempted vehicles (e.g., low-emission vehicles) or increasing toll prices and passenger occupancy limits. Such policy changes may be costly, and may affect related policy goals, such as promoting clean air vehicles. Owing to constant changes in the system (e.g., roadwork, system upgrades), some of the thousands of HOV sensors in California?s transportation system are misconfigured, such as being labeled as general-purpose lanes. In this situation, HOV lane data may be mistakenly aggregated with general-purpose lane data and vice versa, causing a HOV facility to be erroneously reported as degraded and requiring unnecessary policy action. Detecting these misconfigurations is challenging and labor-intensive to accomplish manually. The purpose of this research was to utilize machine learning techniques to detect sensor misconfigurations and to understand the extent to which they affect performance reporting of HOV lanes. The results for Caltrans District 7 (Los Angeles and Ventura counties) showed that about 5% to 8% of Performance Measurement System HOV sensors are misconfigured. Therefore approximately 27 to 44?mi of HOV lanes are erroneously measured, with approximately 10 to 16?mi (38%) of those reporting an erroneously high degradation rating.

Language: en