Center for Traffic Simulation Studies

This paper develops a methodology to fnd appropriate travel times for highway links using data from point detectors that could be at various points within the link, or could even be outside the link. The travel times are found using a definition that the approriate value is the one experienced by a virtual vehicle reaching the mid-point of the link at the mid-point of the time step. A simple iterative scheme is proposed to find the travel time profiles. The accuracy of the scheme will depend on whether aggregated detector data or individual spot speeds are used. Comparison of estimated travel times with actual experienced travel times of all vehicles in a microscopic simulation shows the technique to give very good results, comparable to having a large number of probe vehicles reporting travel times.