Identification and characteristics analysis of bottlenecks on urban expressways based on floating car data

Identifying bottlenecks and analyzing their characteristics are important tasks to city traffic management authorities. Although the speed difference was proposed for the bottleneck identification in the existing research, the use of a secondary indicator has not been fully discussed. This paper strived to develop a method to identify the bottleneck on expressways by using the massive floating car data (FCD) in Beijing. First, the speed characteristics of bottlenecks on expressway were analyzed based on the speed contour map. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between speeds on the bottleneck and downstream links when a bottleneck was observed. The speed difference could indeed be used as the primary indicator to identify the bottleneck. However, it was also shown that a sufficiently large speed difference does not necessitate an activation of a bottleneck. The speed-at-capacity was then used as the secondary indicator to distinguish the real bottleneck from the non-bottleneck speed difference. Second, a practical method for identifying the bottleneck on expressways was developed based on the speed difference and the speed-at-capacity. Finally, the method was applied to identifying the bottlenecks of the 3rd Outer Ring Expressway in Beijing. The duration, affected distance, delay and cause were used to evaluate and analyze the bottlenecks.