Video-based measurement and data analysis of traffic flow on urban expressways

A new video-based measurement is proposed to collect and investigate traffic flow parameters. The output of the measurement is velocity-headway distance data pairs. Because density can be directly acquired by the reciprocal of headway distance, the data pairs have the advantage of better simultaneity than those from common detectors. By now, over 33 000 pairs of data have been collected from two road sections in the cities of Shanghai and Zhengzhou. Through analyzing the video files recording traffic movements on urban expressways, the following issues are studied: laws of vehicle velocity changing with headway distance, proportions of different driving behaviors in the traffic system, and characteristics of traffic flow in snowy days. The results show that the real road traffic is very complex, and factors such as location and climate need to be taken into consideration in the formation of traffic flow models.