Analysis of traffic flow variability on two-lane highways

The main objective of this paper is to develop and test an approach for the spatio-temporal analysis of traffic flow variation on two lane highways. Traffic count devices located in several points of two lane highway links give the aggregate time series of data used in this approach, which is based on the Principal Components Analysis (PCA). The statistical analysis of main sources of temporal variation in traffic flow provides interesting insights about the properties and the characteristics of medium and long-term flow dynamics. This particular methodology was found to be capable of forecasting and identifying the location and the magnitude of traffic peak events in the network.