New perspectives on the use of GPS and GIS to support a highway performance study

In recent decades, rapid growth of travel volume has resulted in a significant increase in traffic congestion, accidents, environmental pollution and energy consumption. Accurate traffic data are drastically needed for effective evaluation of traffic systems in order to alleviate the impacts of increasing travel volume of the quality of life and economic development of urban areas. This article provides a discussion on a data acquisition methodology for highway traffic pattern recognition and congestion analysis by integrating data from the global positioning system (GPS) with a geographic information system (GIS). The GPS technology is a powerful tool in capturing continuous positioning and timing information, whereas the GIS is capable of storing, managing, manipulating, analyzing and displaying the acquired spatial information. Compared to previous studies, the effective integration of the two technologies allows for traffic analysis to be conducted at a finer resolution. The proposed method is illustrated with a case study on multiple major highway segments in Columbus, Ohio.