California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

This study can be viewed as a preliminary exploration of using regression analysis to evaluate long-run traffic management system performance. Four main traffic management systemsin the Twin Cities metro area --- Ramp Metering System, Variable Message Signs (VMS), Highway Helper Program, and High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) System were evaluated based on multiple regression models. Link speed and incident rate were employed as the response variable separately. Consequently, regression analysis can be a simple and effective research method for testing the macroscopic association between traffic management and traffic system performance; however, additional research is still necessary to obtain an overall evaluation of each of the traffic management systems. Furthermore, improvements could be made through model improvement, adding relevant predictor variables, and decreasing data-limitations.