Project: #318 Determining segment and network traffic volumes from video data obtained from transit buses in regular service: Developments and evaluation of approaches for ongoing use across urban networks Progress Report - Reporting Period Ending: March 30, 2022 Principal Investigator: Mark McCord Status: Active Start Date: June 1, 2020 End Date: June 30, 2022 Research Type: Advanced Grant Type: Research Grant Program: FAST Act - Mobility National (2016 - 2022) Grant Cycle: Mobility21 - The Ohio State University Progress Report (Last Updated: March 30, 2022, 10:19 a.m.) % Project Completed to Date: 90 % Grant Award Expended: 80 % Match Expended & Document: 95 USDOT Requirements Accomplishments Goals and Objectives • Refine approaches to determine traffic volumes and related network measures in urban areas from video sensors mounted on transit buses in operational service • Demonstrate performance of the method • Motivate practical use of the method and begin applications • Expand method to an approach for ongoing monitoring of traffic measures Accomplishments • One new undergraduate student was recruited and trained in vehicle digitization by an existing undergraduate student • A large empirical data collection of concurrent manually observed and video data on the campus of The Ohio State University (OSU) was undertaken on November 4, 2021. The video data were subsequently processed and analyzed for research, education, and outreach purposes. The manually collected data will be processed and used for research and outreach purposes in the future. The data collection and processing were used in a term project of a Civil Engineering class consisting of a mix of 28 undergraduate and graduate students. The vehicle miles travelled estimated (see below) are presented to OSU transportation planning and operations managers. • Regarding the data collection on 11/4/2021 and the subsequent processing: o Approximately 123 hours of bus-based video imagery from OSU Campus Area Bus Service (CABS) busses while in regular service were obtained on 4 different bus routes and preprocessed into time- and location-specific vehicle observations. Vehicle observations were then processed into 600 segment-direction-hours of traffic volumes. o Fifty-four (54) segment-direction-hours of manually collected traffic volumes on the OSU roadway network were obtained and processed • Regarding analysis of the data collected on 11/4/2021: o Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) during a 10-hour period (8 am- 6 pm) over a network of 7.8 direction-miles of OSU roadways were determined from the hourly volumes derived from the bus video imagery data o VMT values over a subset of the roadway network and time-of-day period that is common among the 2021 study conducted during this reporting period and the previously conducted 2020, 2019, and 2018 studies were determined and compared to indicate reduced travel during the COVID (2020) period, the increase in 2021 traffic with partial reopening of activities, and the stability of the highest VMT values obtained in the pre-COVID (2018 and 2019) periods o Hourly VMT estimates on the common network for the four different years were determined and analyzed to investigate time-of-day traffic patterns. Time-of-day patterns during the COVID (2020) and partial reopening (2021) periods were similar and different than the time-of-day patterns in the pre-COVID (2018, 2019) periods. Time-of-day patterns in the two pre-COVID periods (2018 and 2019) were similar. • Traffic volume data were obtained from a popular on-demand location-based-service (LBS) data provider. These volumes were used to compute VMT values over segments equipped with road tubes between 8 am and 6 pm on three different days. These LBS-data-based VMTs were compared to VMTs determined from video imagery for the same roadways and time period. Relative differences between video-based VMT and road tube-based VMT (which serve as an estimate of ground truth) are 10% or less, whereas differences between the LBS-data-based and road tube-based VMT values range from 35% to 125% • An effort was begun to investigate daily variations in traffic as estimated from bus-based video data and manually collected data to serve as ground truth. This investigation is targeting one segment-direction during two different hours across multiple days per week over several months. OSU CABS video imagery has been obtained during the targeted hours for the segment-direction (and upstream and downstream segment-directions) on 18 different days since late January 2022. Preliminary processing has been completed on videos from 6 of these days. Over 18 hours of manually collected data, which will serve as ground truth, have been collected and processed for the segment-direction on days when video has been obtained • Video imagery previously collected from OSU CABS buses in regular service between 8 am and 6 pm on three different days in summer 2020 and summer 2021 was pre-processed for subsequent estimation of video-based segment-direction traffic volumes. These volumes will be used to compare spatial-temporal traffic patterns before the onset of the COVID pandemic and at various times after the onset of the pandemic • A new approach for determining a volume estimate over a time period (e.g., an hourly volume) from multiple video-based volume estimates during the time period had previously been developed. This approach is based on integrating flow rates over time. Validation studies were conducted during this reporting period using concurrent video imagery and road tube data. The results support the improved accuracy obtained with the “integration approach” • Previously, the quality of video-based volume estimates determined when aggregating multiple bus passes was empirically seen to improve (become closer to volumes obtained from road tubes) when video-based volumes on individual bus passes either equal to zero or greater than an estimate of road capacity were excluded from aggregation. This result was confirmed during this reporting period with additional validation studies. Attempts were also made to improve estimation by moderating, rather than excluding, these very low or very high estimates. Preliminary empirical results indicate that such modifications will improve the estimates Training and professional development • Two graduate students and five undergraduate students were involved with various efforts of this project • One undergraduate student continues to take responsibility for training students on various data processing tasks and supervising data processing assignments. During this reporting period, this student was awarded the WTS (Women’s Transportation Seminar) Columbus Chapter Molitoris Leadership Scholarship • A second undergraduate student has taken a leadership role in the recently begun activity involved with assessing the ability to determine daily variations in traffic volumes obtained from video imagery. During this reporting period, this student was awarded a fellowship to pursue graduate studies in transportation Dissemination • A presentation covering empirical VMT monitoring over time using traffic volumes estimated from bus-based video imagery and the much better accuracy provided from this approach compared to using data provided by commercial providers was made in person at the 2021 Ohio Transportation Engineering Conference on October 27, 2021 • A presentation covering the improvements made to the methodology used to estimate traffic volumes from bus-based video imagery and demonstrating the use of the methodology for monitoring of traffic patterns over time was made online at the Smart Mobility Connection Seminar on February 11, 2022 • Investigators meet regularly with administrators from The Ohio State University’s Transportation and Traffic Management (TTM) to update them on this and other projects that address practical issues of interest to TTM operations. Upon request of the investigators, TTM provides the video imagery used for the research, outreach, and educational tasks in this project. At one meeting during the reporting period, VMT results for the OSU campus and the much better accuracy obtained when using bus-based video imagery than when using data from a commercial on-demand LBS data provider – a provider used by TTM – were presented and particularly generated interest among TTM administrators Plans for upcoming period • Process additional video imagery into digital location- and time-specific vehicle observations • Develop volume estimates from processed video imagery • Refine and validate approaches that produce estimates of video-based traffic volume estimates • Validate the benefits of estimating average-day traffic volumes in a time-of-day period relative to estimating single day traffic volumes in the time-of-day period • Investigate the ability to determine daily variations in traffic volumes from bus-based video for use in ongoing traffic monitoring • Compare video-based volume estimates with volume estimates provided by third party commercial suppliers • Continue interactions with OSU Transportation and Traffic Management (TTM) Impacts • Regular meetings with The Ohio State University (OSU) Transportation and Traffic Management (TTM) office continue to generate interest in the empirical traffic flow estimates being produced and motivate ongoing collaboration in project research and outreach efforts Other Physical collections: During the period video imagery and manually collected data were obtained Curricula: During the period, the approach being refined and evaluated in this study was presented as a module and served as the basis of a term project in one undergraduate/graduate Civil Engineering class consisting of 28 students. Outcomes New Partners Investigators continued to work closely with Transportation and Traffic Management (TTM) at The Ohio State University (OSU). TTM oversees all OSU transportation operations, other than parking, and operates the Campus Area Bus Service (CABS), with a fleet of approximately fifty 40-foot transit buses serving close to 5 million passengers per year on fixed route scheduled services. Issues None