ADT
on local freeways
Which
freeway carries more traffic - I-5 or I-805? The charts below show
the daily traffic on these two freeways through the Golden Triangle
area over four month period in 2003. Dark blue points are southbound
trips, and pink points are total (northbound plus southbound). These
data have several noteworthy features, some of which are quite familiar:
- Freeway
volumes rise throughout the work week, and are in general larger
on Fridays than on Mondays. Saturday is a more popular travel
day than Sunday.
- During
the Spring, the AWT (average weekday
traffic) on I-5 is about 140,000. The volume
on I-805 is about 175,000. The volume rises slightly during the
peak month of August (longer days; more trips taken).
- The
northbound AWT on I-805 is actually larger than the southbound
AWT.
See if you can spot the following anomalies in the data: (i) Memorial
Day, (ii) Independence Day, (iii) Labor Day. And do you remember
what happened on Wednesday, May 14, 2003?
Data
obtained from the PeMS
database at University of California, Berkeley.
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