Traffic Engineers Are Preparing for the Coming Big Data Era: Prototype Development of a Comprehensive Intersection Volume Analysis Tool

With the big data era arriving, traffic engineers are witnessing that more and more traffic data and information is becoming available for efficient use. To handle such big data and to take advantage of the data with wider range, finer granularity and longer history is a challenge for traffic engineers. Although some off-the-shelf big data tools exist currently, a customized tool for traffic engineers’ applications is more desirable at this juncture. This paper describes a prototype of intersection volume analysis tool that can utilize and automatically handle the increasing size and content of traffic data and information. A combination of several customized chart types such as Box Whisker, Radarpie and Time Series charts were used in the tool for analysis of every movement volume at an intersection over each day of a week. These charts are presented in hourly, daily and periodic patterns for each day of a week. Traffic Engineer can look from almost all possible angles of view with about 300 charts and pictures depicting patterns for an intersection. The online version enables engineers to zoom in and out and to dig into Time Series charts for in-depth details interactively. It is tested that the tool can help traffic engineers for signal timing optimization, traffic pattern analysis, reviews related to signal phasing and other traffic studies. The tool can also assist in real time arterial traffic or incident management.