Is traffic forecasting the future of transportation?
While the U.S. at large has yet to adopt this tool, Gorman said, Singapore and Stockholm already use the technology. To test it out, the Turnpike Authority launched an in-house pilot earlier this year. The trial examined Traffic Operations Center data from two traffic-heavy days and measured that against the system’s forecasts. Highway officials found that the system could forecast traffic jams with 93 percent accuracy on the parkway and 90 percent on the turnpike. Why the difference? “Different roadways have different characteristics, like personalities,” Gorman said. “Each roadway’s geometries allow drivers to have different behaviors, which impacts congestion.” The turnpike especially has unique characteristics, including a dual roadway configuration that splits into east and west spurs in the Newark area and reconnects near the George Washington Bridge. But the two roadways share a common trait: bottlenecks. In 2009, 396 million vehicles traveled on the parkway and 234 million on t
