AbstractThe Portland Oregon Transportation Archive Listing (PORTAL) archives high resolution traffic data including speed, volume, and occupancy collected from 500 freeway loop detectors in the Portland metropolitan area. PORTAL currently provides measures related to total congestion that occurs on the freeway network, but cannot presently distinguish between recurrent and non-recurrent congestion effects. In response to the need to make such a distinction, the objective of this paper is to describe the incorporation of freeway incident data received from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) into PORTAL. ODOT’s freeway incident database includes information about vehicle crashes and stalls, debris on the road, construction and other random events. The paper describes the incident archive architecture and demonstrates how users can view incident data associated with a particular time frame and location. For example, a user analyzing data from a particular day will be able to immediately access associated incident data so the user can determine if the traffic pattern is related to an incident. In addition, freeway incident performance metrics will be described, including tracking of incident trends over time and location and numbers of incidents by incident type. Finally, the paper will describe how comparing incidents with weather data archived in the PORTAL database can be used to determine how weather has influenced incidents. The above-described incident performance metrics are useful to traffic researchers and practitioners and may contribute to incident-reduction measures in the Portland area.

ConclusionsThis paper has described an automated data cleaning and aggregation process for incident data from the ODOT ATMS database. By automating the data cleaning, it is now possible to quickly produce incident records from ATMS database incident entries, which are stored in the PORTAL data archive. Having such incident records in PORTAL allows incident statistics to be generated with minimal effort. In addition, any PORTAL user can easily access the incidents for a particular freeway during a time interval so that traffic patterns can be compared with associated incident data. In particular, this research has demonstrated how incidents can be displayed on speed contour plots to allow users to distinguish between recurrent and non-recurrent congestion. Finally, since PORTAL archives weather data, weather conditions can be easily compared to incident records. This flexible, automatic incident cleaning and archive technology provides a new and useful tool to traffic practitioners and researchers.

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the Jack Marchant and Dennis Mitchell at the Oregon Department of Transportation for providing the data and the National Science Foundation for funding this research.

Highwaya Length (miles)

Incidents/Mile/Day

Monitored Length (miles)

Incidents/MVMTb

I-5 NB 25 0.31 23.02 7.5

I-5 SB 25 0.31 20.72 6.6

1-205 NB 25 0.18 20.07 4.6

1-205 SB 25 0.20 24.12 4.7

I-84 WB 65 0.07 10.53 8.8

I-84 EB 65 0.06 3.7 16.9

US 26 EB 52 0.05 13.33 7.6

US 26 WB 52 0.08 8.41 30.3

OR 217 NB 7 0.13 6.94 2.7

OR 217 SB 7 0.11 10.78 2.4

I-405 NB 4 0.30 0 -

I-405 SB 4 0.34 2.47 20.1

a Selected highways; table includes located incidents only

b 2005 incidents only, incidents reported on full length, MVMT calculated on monitored length

Incident Statistics (1999-2005)

Incident data from ODOT ATMS (Advanced Transportation Management Systems) Database

139,484 incidents from July 30, 1999 – Dec 31, 2005

Data entered by operators at the ODOT TMOC (Traffic Management Operations Center)

Web Server

Plot Page Generation Incident Record

Table

Incident Entries Table

Operators Create Incident Entries

Incident Plot Display

Database Server

Aggregation Query

ODOT TMOC

Manual Transfer

SQL Query

Query Result

Page Request

Generated Web Page

Central Server

Client Machine

Web Browser

File Request

Web Page Plot

Incident data architecture in PORTAL

Incident ID Fire Department Presence Pickup/Van Count Scheduled Start

Incident Type ID Hazardous Materials Presence DOT Vehicle Count Scheduled End

Detection Type ID Injury Count Construction Vehicle Count Actual Start

County Code ID Fatality Count Motorhome/Bus Count Actual End

City Code ID Need Police Flag Light Truck Count Confirm Flag

Primary Route Need COMET Flag Tractor Trailer Count Confirm Time

Secondary Route Need Auto Wrecker Flag Other Vehicle Count Confirm Operator

Location Type ID Need Truck Wrecker Flag Hazard Flag Last Update Time

Location Text Guardrail Damage Officer Name Last Update Operator

Direction Pavement Damage Officer Badge Number Action Pending

Affected Lane Type ID Signal Damage Estimated End Plan Flag

Number Lanes Affected Light Pole Damage Impact Type Diversion Flag

Station ID Structure Damage Number Calls X Position, Y Position

Segment ID Other Damage Reported Via ID Alarm Interval

Navlink Start ID Pedestrian Count Reported by Name Incident Level

Navlink End ID Railroad Count Contact Name Comments

Jurisdiction Automobile Count Contact Phone

Located Flag Motorcycle Count Radio Unit Number

Incident Data Fields

Incident Tree 2005

N = 14253 *

In-Lane 37.3%

Shoulder 62.7%

Crash 41.1%

Stall 58.9%

Crash 10.3%

Stall 89.7%

One Lane 71.8%

Multi-Lane 28.2%

One Lane 98.8%

Multi-Lane 1.2%

* Incidents with complete lane location data

Incorporating Incident Data into a Freeway Data Archive for Improved Performance Measurement

Jessica Potter, Suman Tasnim, Dr. Kristin Tufte and Dr. Robert Bertini, Portland State University

Display of incident location and duration in PORTAL

Construc-tion2%

Conges-tion0%

Other Closure

1%

Tow 6%

Debris 12%

Other Incident

7% Crash 15%

Stall 57%

2 Lanes3%

3+ Lanes1%

1 Lane31%

0 Lanes65%

Incidents by Type and Number of Lanes Affected for 1999–2005 (N=128,886)

Right Lanes16%

All Lanes 5%

Center Lanes 4%

Left Lanes11%

Off Road Right 1%

Gore Area (right) 1%

Unknown 4% None 10%

Gore Area (left) 0%

Right Shoulder

44%

Left Shoulder 4%

Off Road Left 0%

Incidents by location for 1999–2005 (N = 17,855)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Month

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rag

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of

Inci

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ts P

er D

ay

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28

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er o

f W

et D

ays

Crashes on Dry Days

Crashes on Wet Days

Wet DaysCrashes and precipitation (2005)

Incidents By Hour and Type (1999-2005)

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

12

:00

AM

2:0

0A

M

4:0

0A

M

6:0

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M

8:0

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M

10

:00

AM

12

:00

PM

2:0

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M

4:0

0P

M

6:0

0P

M

8:0

0P

M

10

:00

PM

Ave

rage

In

cid

ents

Per

Day

TotalStallCrashDebrisConstruction

Incidents by hour and type (1999-2005)

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Nu

mb

er

of

Incid

en

ts a

nd

MV

MT

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Incid

en

ts/M

VM

T

Incidents

MVMT

Incidents/MVMT

Incidents and MVMT by month (1999-2005)

0:00

0:10

0:20

0:30

0:40

0:50

1:00

1:10

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Du

rati

on

(H

:MM

)

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000All located incidentsExclude hazmat, fatalExclude construction, congestionNumber of located incidents

Average incident duration by year (July 1999 – Dec 2005)

Incident on I-205N at the off ramp for Hwy 212/214. A log truck rear-ended a truck carrying nursery stock; two cars also involved. Incident lasted just over 4 hours.

0:00

1:00

2:00

3:00

4:00

5:00

6:00

7:00

8:00

9:00

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Du

rati

on

(H:M

M) Accident

Stall

Debris

Tow

Construction

Congestion

Other Closure

Other Incident

Average incident duration by incident type

Incident on I-205 Southbound. One lane closed.

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