United States Department of Transportation
i
Length based vehicle classification on freeways from single loop detectors.
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2009-10-15
[PDF-4.49 MB]
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Abstract:Roadway usage, particularly by large vehicles, is one of the fundamental factors determining the lifespan
of highway infrastructure, e.g., as evidenced by the federally mandated Highway Performance
Monitoring System (HPMS). But the complexity of Weigh in Motion (WIM) and other classification
stations makes them difficult and costly to maintain. Some of the classification stations employ axle
counters, but the least expensive of these stations use dual loop detectors to measure vehicle length
and classify vehicles based on this measurement. To date, collecting reliable length data from single loop
detectors has been considered impossible due to the noisy speed estimates. Single loop detectors
promise to be an inexpensive alternative to spread classification coverage to the existing count stations
and existing traffic operations detector stations. By extending classification to the relatively high density
of real time traffic monitoring stations in urban areas, the classification work could allow these urban
traffic management systems to better monitor freight traffic within the metropolitan areas.
The research seeks to develop a means to reliably classify vehicles using estimated vehicle length from
single loop detectors. Single loop detectors are the most common vehicle detector, yet they are not
used for vehicle classification due to the inherent noise in the individual vehicle length estimates. This
work has developed a means to extract more reliable vehicle speed estimates from single loop
detectors, and thus, vehicle length estimates as well. This new, reliable, single loop detector
methodology for classifying vehicles based on estimated vehicle length is significant because it will
provide a low cost means of collecting vehicle classification data by extending the capabilities of existing
single loop detectors. There are thousands of single loop detectors on the freeways within the region
served by NEXTRANS.
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