Empirical Measurement of Freeway Oscillation Characteristics

Abstract

A country-specific analysis of freeway traffic oscillations was conducted. Loop detector data from sites in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom were analyzed. With the use of a method applied in previous work, traffic oscillations were identified in all three countries. Calculation of the cross-correlation coefficient revealed that they traveled upstream at speeds of about 19 to 20 km/h at the U.S. site, 16 km/h at the German site, and 14 km/h on the U.K. freeway. Similar magnitudes were found in the literature verifying the hypothesis that they propagated faster in the United States than in Germany. Furthermore, an oscillation frequency was identified by calculation of the data's autocorrelation. However, since the oscillation frequency was likely to be site specific, conclusions regarding general differences between the frequencies measured in different countries cannot yet be made. For the sites analyzed, it was found that oscillations appeared every 8 to 12 min on the M4 (U.K. site), every 10 to 30 min on the A9 (German site), and every 3 to 6 min on OR-217 (U.S. site). Although the magnitudes of the latter two countries were supported by the literature, further empirical research on several different sites should be pursued to draw final conclusions.

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