Development and Performance Assessment of Winter Climate Hazard Models on Traffic Volume with Four Model Structure Types

Abstract

Much previous research recognizes hazardous winter-weather conditions such as heavy snowfall and cold temperatures as affecting the change in traffic volume, and modeling has been used to simulate variations in traffic flow caused by these factors. Similar to previous studies, the winter-weather hazard model was estimated using 6-year weigh-in-motion traffic data collected on Highway 2A, Alberta, Canada, and weather data from a nearby weather station to quantify the change in traffic volume due to winter-weather conditions. However, different from the existing research, the developed model has been tested in terms of temporal transferability and model specification. The temporal transferability test revealed that the established model is suitable for use regardless of the year. The model specification test showed that each vehicle class could have the model specification optimized differently to estimate correct traffic volume during winter-weather conditions.