Software Tool Cuts Time to Analyze Twin Cities Congestion

Newly developed software has drastically reduced the amount of time and effort required by MnDOT’s Regional Transportation Management Center (RTMC) to analyze congestion in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Developing MnDOT’s annual Metropolitan Freeway System Congestion Report used to be a manual process that could be applied to only a portion of the large quantity of data generated by in-pavement sensors.

The new Highway Automated Reporting Tool now automatically imports and cleans data to produce a report about the percentage of network miles congested during peak periods as well as three new reports on other performance measures.

The tool will help MnDOT engineers and planners better develop congestion reduction strategies and determine the most cost-effective investments in the network.

From RTMC’s control room, engineers monitor and manage 400 miles of Twin Cities freeway traffic using data from thousands of in-pavement sensors.

“Before HART, it took months to analyze freeway performance using traffic data from only the month of October. Now engineers can quickly analyze data from any time period, significantly improving traffic planning,” said Jesse Larson, Assistant Freeway Operations Engineer for MnDOT’s Metro District Regional Transportation Management Center.

The tool was developed in a MnDOT-funded study led by University of Minnesota researcher John Hourdos.

Note: This article was adapted from the May–June 2014 issue of our Accelerator newsletter. Sign up for your free print or email subscription by clicking here.