Purpose of Mobility Analysis
Mobility analysis is used to identify trends and examine issues related to urban traffic congestion. Mobility analysis can be used to:
- Help evaluate and prioritize project needs in terms of the efficiency of traffic flow for development of the Six Year Highway Plan;
- Compare cities or corridor’s congestion levels; and
- Set benchmarking goals for future congestion/mobility levels for roadway corridors and cities.
Mobility Analysis Team
The mobility team is comprised of representatives from Divisions of Planning, Traffic Operations and the Federal Highway Administration. Agendas from team meetings can be found in the mobility analysis links. This team develops, tests and evaluates mobility analys is performance measures for Kentucky.
Mobility Analysis Tools
Historically, the Highway Capacity Manual and the Highway Capacity Software have been the tools used to evaluate traffic flow. New tools have emerged in recent years including:
- Travel time based measure such as the Travel Time Index (TTI), the Travel Rate Index (TRI), and the buffer index. These new travel time base measures were developed by the Texas Transportation Institute through the Annual Urban Mobility Study;
- Multimodal Level of Service analysis. This adaptation of the Highway Capacity Manual expands capacity analysis to other modes of travel such as transit, pedestrians and bicycles;
- Use of ITS Archived Data for various mobility efforts such as speed, volume and vehicle classification data.
- Traffic Simulation models such as FHWA’s CORSIM model.
KYTC Mobility Analysis Activities
Support for Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI) Annual Mobility Report
The Cabinet is a sponsor of this annual report that uses the new travel time based performance measures to evaluate congestion in 75 major US cities including Louisville and Cincinnati. The report can be found Here.
Mobility Monitoring Program
The purpose of the mobility monitoring program is to use actual ITS data to calculate travel time based mobility performance measures. Both ARTIMIS (Greater Cincinnati ITS) and TRIMARC (Louisville) are participating in this FHWA program.
Archived Data Management System
The University of Kentucky's Transportation Center is conducting a research study (KYSPR-04-279) to make use of and study archived data, especially from ARTIMIS and TRIMARC.
Cabinet activities that support the use of the new mobility tools include:
- Support for Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI) Annual Mobility report
- Mobility Monitoring Program.
- Archived Data Management System.
- Multimodal Level of Service analysis
