Research on road traffic congestion index based on comprehensive parameters: Taking Dalian city as an example

Abstract

Traffic congestion index reflects the state of traffic flow. The detection and analysis on traffic congestion index can be used to estimate the operation status of roads, to plan and organize road traffic for traffic managers, and to make the reasonable decisions of travelers to travel. The traffic conditions of several evaluation indexes were analyzed. Based on the theory of fuzzy mathematics, some membership functions of the evaluating indexes were designed. Three calculation methods of traffic congestion index were proposed. Their calculation results were compared mutually. The conclusion revealed that using saturation calculated by the corresponding service level of traffic congestion index not well reflect the traffic situation, what’s more, travel speed is used to calculate the congestion index of the first method. Using comprehensive parameters can calculate the congestion index of the third method. Both them are roughly similar and in line with the actual traffic phenomenon.