Towards Sustainable Cities: Utilizing Floating Car Data to Support Location-Based Road Network Performance Measurements

Abstract

Road network performance (RNP) is a key element for urban sustainability as it has a significant impact on economy, environment, and society. Poor RNP can lead to traffic congestion, which can lead to higher transportation costs, more pollution and health issues regarding the urban population. To evaluate the effects of the RNP, the involved stakeholders need a real-world data base to work with. This paper develops a data collection approach to enable location-based RNP analysis using publicly available traffic information. Therefore, we use reachable range requests implemented by navigation service providers to retrieve travel times, travel speeds, and traffic conditions. To demonstrate the practicability of the proposed methodology, a comparison of four German cities is made, considering the network characteristics with respect to detours, infrastructure, and traffic congestion. The results are combined with cost rates to compare the economical dimension of sustainability of the chosen cities. Our results show that digitization eases the assessment of traffic data and that a combination of several indicators must be considered depending on the relevant sustainability dimension decisions are made from.