Effect of Snow, Temperature and Their Interaction on Highway Truck Traffic.docVIP

Journal of Transportation Technologies, 2013, 3, 24-38 /10.4236/jtts.2013.31003 Published Online January 2013 (/journal/jtts) Effect of Snow, Temperature and Their Interaction on Highway Truck Traffic Hyuk-Jae Roh , Sandeep Datla , Satish Sharma 1 2 3* 1 Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure, Regina, Canada City of Edmonton, Edmonton, Canada Faculty of Engineering, University of Regina, Regina, Canada Email: jae.roh@gov.sk.ca, sandeep.datla@edmonton.ca, 2 3 * Satish.Sharma@uregina.ca Received October 23, 2012; revised November 24, 2012; accepted December 8, 2012 ABSTRACT Based on statistical amount of traffic and weather data sets from three weigh-in-motion sites for the study period of from 2005 to 2009, permanent traffic counters and weather stations in Alberta, Canada, an investigation is carried out to study impacts of winter weather on volume of passenger car and truck traffic. Multiple regression models are developed to relate truck and passenger car traffic variations to winter weather conditions. Statistical validity of study results are confirmed by using statistical tests of significance. Considerable reductions in passenger car and truck volumes can be expected with decrease in cold temperatures. Such reductions are higher for passenger cars as compared to trucks. Due to cold and snow interactions, the reduction in car and truck traffic volume due to cold temperature could intensify with a rise in the amount of snowfall. For passenger cars, weekends experience higher traffic reductions as compared to weekdays. However, the impact of weather on truck traffic is generally similar for weekdays and weekends. Interest- ingly, an increase in truck traffic during severe weather conditions is noticed at one of the study sites. Such phenome- non is found statistically significant. None of the past studies in the literature