Estimativa da confiabilidade do tempo de viagem em vias arteriais urbanas de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Travel time reliability has become a key performance indicator in transportation networks and road corridors in several countries. Historically, measures such as average travel time have been used for road performance analysis, but there is now growing interest in measures of dispersion such as variance. This is important for logistics and transportation companies as it affects the arrival times of users in the network. Research into travel time reliability measurements has grown since the 1990s, with recent publications demonstrating continued interest. Therefore, this research focuses on Belo Horizonte seeking to answer the question on what the travel time reliability patterns in the urban roads of the city are. So, the general objective was to estimate the reliability of travel time on urban arterial roads in Belo Horizonte. To achieve this objective, the research method comprised two stages, the first was obtaining data for the development of the work; and the second stage was the analysis of travel time distributions. For the first stage, road sections in Belo Horizonte were selected for the development of the study and data from the API (Application Programming Interface) Google Distance Matrix from the Google Maps navigation/GPS service platform and speed sensors were used from the city of Belo Horizonte. In the second stage, the development of a method to group periods of the day with behaviours like travel time was presented; the travel time distributions and probabilistic models suitable for field data are defined – verifying adherence to four types of theoretical distributions (Lognormal, Burr, Gamma, and Weibull); the reliability of travel time in relation to the analysis periods and days of the week are evaluated. For this last activity, detailed specifications for the local context were selected through a literature review. The results showed the periods of the day, and days of the week with low travel time reliability. Thus, this research not only sought to contribute to the local understanding of travel time reliability, but also introduced and disseminated important concepts in a national context, considering that the topic has been studied for decades in the international context.