Traffic Performance Score (TPS)

Measuring traffic performance is critical for public agencies who manage traffic and individuals who plan trips, especially when special events happen. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced almost every aspect of daily life, including urban traffic patterns. Thus, it is important to measure the impact of COVID-19 on transportation to further guide agencies and residents to properly respond to changes in traffic patterns. However, most existing traffic performance metrics incorporate only a single traffic parameter and measure only the performance of individual corridors. To overcome these challenges, in this study, a Traffic Performance Score (TPS) is proposed that incorporates multiple parameters for measuring network-wide traffic performance. An interactive web-based TPS platform that provides real-time and historical spatial-temporal traffic performance analysis is developed by the STAR Lab at the University of Washington. Based on data from this platform, this study analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on different road segments and the traffic network as a whole. Considering this pandemic has greatly reshaped social and economic operations, this study also evaluates how COVID-19 is changing the urban mobility from both travel demand and driving behavior perspectives.

Figure 1. Segment-based TPS is visualized for the freeway network in Greater Seattle Area for an arbitrary day (Link to the platform).

Related Publication
Cui, Z., Zhu, M., Wang, S., Wang, P., Zhou, Y., Cao, Q., Kopca, C. & Wang, Y. (2020). Traffic performance score for measuring the impact of COVID-19 on urban mobility. arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.00648.

STAR Lab