Trends in Road Traffic Congestion: An Extreme Order Statistics

Approach

A. STATHOPOULOS AND M. KARLAFTIS

Department of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece.

Most of the widely used statistical models are based on “average behavior”; that is, they are built
around explaining and predicting the outcome of the mean of available data. And, in most
analyses, observations that are too “far” from the mean, i.e. outliers, are discarded. But, an
important question needs to be addressed: do outliers (also called extreme values) contain
information that can be useful in practice and are there any statistical techniques that provide for
their modeling? The goal of this paper is twofold. First, to offer a short exposition of the
fundamental principles governing the analysis of extreme values and, second, to offer a traffic
example of how the use of extreme value analysis can improve on the results of more commonly
used statistical techniques. The results of the case study suggest that both the sign and the
magnitude of an estimated trend term vary significantly between extreme value and regression
models, a finding with very important policy implications.
keywords: traffic data analysis, extreme values, outliers, extreme order statistics

INTRODUCTION
Transportation and traffic considerations most frequently revolve around the analysis of

available data; data on accident counts, traffic injuries, freight volumes, passengers, traffic

flows, highway speeds, etc. Appropriate models are fit to these data to “explain” and predict the

behavior of corresponding variables. As is well known, most of the commonly used models are

based on “average behavior”; that is, most models are built around explaining and predicting the

outcome of the mean of the available data.

And, while this approach is very satisfactory in modeling most of the commonly

encountered problems there are, many times, transportation problems that deal with boundary

conditions. These conditions can be, for example, congested traffic, speed limit violators,

extreme terminal delays, etc. From a methodological standpoint all these problems have been

dealt with using the commonly available statistical analysis tools (linear, non-linear and Poisson

regression, time-series analyses, etc.). But, an important question needs to be addressed: are the

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 commonly used statistical methods still unbiased, efficient and asymptotically consistent when

dealing with boundary or extreme conditions? And, furthermore, are there any other statistical

techniques that can provide for improved modeling of such phenomena and also allow for useful

inferences to be made?

In most statistical analyses the usual course of action is to discard observations that are

“too far” from the mean; these observations are commonly termed outliers. But, as is widely

recognized, outliers frequently contain information that can shed much light into the phenomena

being studied. Furthermore, in many cases, these outliers can help predict the occurrence of

other such outliers much better than by studying the remainder of the values. For example, it is

quite possible that by examining the occurrence of, say, very high traffic occupancy values

(occupancy is frequently recognized as the “best” indicator of congestion), the future occurrence

of such values can be better predicted. That is, by concentrating the study on congestion itself,

rather than on the entire series of occupancy values, it may be easier and more effective to

predict its occurrence.

Interestingly, the study of phenomena far from the mean, phenomena that are infrequent,

or, in mathematical terms, phenomena that occur in the tail of probability distributions have, for

a long time, been the focus of many scientific disciplines. Seismologists and geotechnical

engineers have been very interested in the occurrence of earthquakes of extreme magnitudes;

oceanographers and hydraulic engineers have been interested in the occurrence of the T-year

flood level; meteorologists and structural engineers have been interested in the occurrence of

strong hurricanes. All these phenomena, powerful hurricanes and earthquakes, T-year floods, etc.

have been described as extreme events and, as such, their analysis is widely known as “Analysis

of Extreme Values” or “Extreme Order Statistics” (as a point of scientific interest it should be

noted that extreme value analyses have been used to study a very wide variety of subjects

ranging from the atmospheric ozone levels to earthquakes, to hurricanes, to stock market returns,

to population aging and sea levels. Of-course, a discussion of these studies is beyond the scope

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 of this paper; interested readers should refer to (1), (2) and (3) for both an in-depth discussion of

the available techniques and a description of a gamut of available case studies).

The spirit and the goal of the analysis of extreme values is to develop models that can

capture the essential information contained in them, i.e. in the tails of distributions, and to

improve on the projection of re-occurrence of such events. The potential for applying these

techniques in transportation problems is very promising; questions such as congestion

occurrence, trends in traffic flows, extreme highway speeds, high accident areas, etc. can all be

studied using the tools provided by extreme value analysis. The goal of this paper is twofold.

First, to offer a short exposition of the fundamental principles governing extreme value analysis

and, second, to offer a traffic example of how the use of extreme value analysis can improve on

the results of more commonly used statistical techniques. The remainder of this paper is

organized as follows; the next section reviews some of the fundamental mathematical principles

upon which extreme value analysis is built. The third section describes and offers some results

from applying extreme value analysis to a traffic database and, finally, the fourth section offers

some concluding remarks.

CONCEPTS OF EXTREME ORDER STATISTICS

Fundamental Concepts
The issues related to the analysis of Extreme Order Statistics (Extreme Values) may be

described, in broad terms, as an effort to make statistical inferences about the extreme values in a

population or a random process. The traditional approach (4) is based on the extreme value limit

distributions first identified by Fisher and Tippett (5) and applied to a large number of cases as

reviewed in the introductory section. A typical application consists of the generalized extreme

value distribution fitted to annual (or of any predefined time period) maxima (that is, the

maximum value of a given series for a given time period) and can be defined as

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 1κ

  y − µ  
H ( y; µ ,ψ ,κ ) = exp  −  1 − κ   (1)
 
 ψ  

over the range of y that κ ( y − µ ) < ψ , where ψ > 0 and κ , µ are arbitrary. The case κ = 0 is

interpreted as the limit κ → 0 , that is

  y − µ  
H ( y; µ ,ψ ,0 ) = exp  − exp  −  (2)

  ψ  

the type I family of Gumbel distribution(4). These distributions are justified as the limiting

stable distributions of extreme value theory. The numerical fitting procedures were developed by

Prescott and Walden (6, 7) and a Newton-Raphson algorithm was developed by Hosking (8) and

amended by Macleod (9). For the asymptotics of Maximum Likelihood, see Smith (10); it should

be noted though that there is evidence that Maximum Likelihood estimation does not work well

in small samples (8, 9, 10), and other methods have been proposed, the most well known of

which is the “probability weighted moments” approach proposed by Hosking et al. (11). It

should also be noted that an extension to the usual time period maxima is to use several of the

largest order statistics in that period (12, 13, 14).

Threshold methods, the second most important area of interest in Extreme Order

Statistics after the Maxima method, have been extensively developed by hydrologists over the

last 30 years, often under the acronym of the POT (peaks over threshold) method. These

methods are based on fitting a stochastic model to either the exceedances or the peaks over a

threshold for a given series. Such methods have been used for quite some time, but the first

systematic treatment was by Todorovic and Zelenhasic (15) and Todorovic and Rousselle (16).

The approach most commonly employed in practice is based on the generalized Pareto

distribution, which has an interpretation similar to that which motivates Eq. (1). The remainder

of this Section deals with POT methods since this class of models shows most promise in

transportation and traffic related problems. It studies the occurrence of phenomena over a

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 “tolerance” value (acceptable threshold), such as highway speeds over the speed limit, traffic

flows in the unstable region, etc. These are typical cases where the analyst may wish to identify

and analyze classes of events that could potentially lead to severe consequences in a particular

context. In this case, in which the potential extremist events have not yet been identified or

occurred, a systematic approach to identifying potential damaging events may be extremely

crucial.

The Generalized Pareto Distribution

The most straightforward models for exceedances over thresholds are based on a Poisson

process of exceedance times (when, for example, congestion occurs during a time period)

combined with independent excesses over the threshold (the magnitude of congestion). Consider

a threshold u, and let N denote the number of exceedances of u during a period of, say, m

months. Suppose the excesses, or the differences between the observations over the threshold

and the thresholf itself, are independent with common distribution function G. The theory upon

which POT models is built suggests that G is the generalized Pareto distribution given by

1k
 y
G ( y;σ , κ ) = 1 −  1 − κ  (3)
 σ 

where σ > 0 and κ is arbitrary; the range of y is 0 < y < ∞ if κ ≤ 0 , o < y < σ κ if κ > 0 .

When κ = 0 then Eq. (3) corresponds to the exponential distribution with mean σ . There are

several ways of motivating Eq. (3). Pickards (17) showed that this equation arises as a limiting

distribution for excesses over thresholds if and only if the parent distribution is in the domain of

attraction of one of the extreme value distributions. Another motivation suggests that if Y is

generalized Pareto and u>0, then the conditional distribution of Y-u given Y>u is also

generalized Pareto. Another property suggests that if N has a Poisson distribution and,

conditionally on N , Y1 ,..., YN are independent identically distributed generalized Pareto random

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 variables, then max (Y1 ,..., YN ) has the generalized extreme value distribution. Thus, a Poisson

process of exceedance times with generalized Pareto excesses implies the classical extreme

value distributions. These properties suggest that the generalized Pareto distribution will be a

practical family for statistical estimation, provided that the threshold is taken sufficiently high.

Of-course, the question that naturally arises is how high to take the threshold. Theoretical results

are available that guide toward threshold selection (see, for example, Smith (18)), but in this

paper a 92% and over occupancy measurement is considered as corresponding to congested

conditions (Bensalah (19) suggesting that, as a rule-of-thumb, extreme value analysis is

concerned with quantiles over 90%).

Methods for estimating the generalized Pareto distribution parameters have been

thoroughly reviewed by Hosking and Wallis (20). Maximum Likelihood estimators exist in large

1
samples provided that κ < 1 and are asymptotically normal and efficient if κ ≤ . In general, it
2

is possible to reduce maximum likelihood estimation to a one-dimensional search whose log-

likelihood based on Y1 ,..., YN is

∑ log (1 − κ Y σ )
N
− n log σ + (1 κ − 1) i
1

Writing σ = κ τ and differentiating with respect to τ and κ , the maximum with respect to κ

is achieved when

∑ log (1 − τ Y )
N
κ = κ (τ ) = − N −1 i
1

Thus, the maximum likelihood estimation reduces to solving the single equation

∑Y
N
N τ = {1 κ (τ ) − 1} i (1 − τ Yi )
1

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 The most frequently encountered “competitor” for maximum likelihood estimation is the

probability weighted moments method of Hosking and Wallis (20). The rth probability weighted

moment is defined as

σ
α r = E Y {1 − G ( Y )}  =
r

  ( r + 1)( r + 1 + k )
where G is the generalized Pareto distribution function. The method essentially consists of

equating the theoretical and sample-based values of the probability weighted moments for r=0,1.

POT Regression
The most widely used application of statistics is the description of systematic variation in a

variable of primary interest, a response or dependent variable, in terms of covariates (or

explanatory or independent variables). In the context of POT models, regression assumes that κ

and σ are functions of covariates and regression parameters.

Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Suppose that the Yi , i = 1,..., N are independent generalized Pareto random variables with

parameters κ i = κ ( zTi γ ) and σ i = σ ( xTi β ) , where xi and zi are known vectors of covariates of

respective lengths p+1 and q+1. Suppose in addition that the Yi may be upper truncated at

random, and say that δ i = 0 if yi is the observed value of the random variable Yi , but that δ i = 1

if yi is a lower bound for the true but unobserved Yi . The contribution to the overall log-

likelihood L = ∑l i made by Yi is

 − yi σ i − log σ i + δ i log σ i , κi = 0

li ( yi ;σ i ,κ i ) =   1   yi    yi   (4)
  κ − 1 log  1 − κ i σ  − log σ i + δ i log σ i + log  1 − κ i σ  , κ i ≠ 0
 i   i  
  i  

finally, the score vector has components

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 ∂L
∑ z κ ∂l ( y∂;κσ ,κ )
N
= i i i i

∂γ
i i
i =1 i
(5)
∂l ( y ;σ ,κ )
= ∑xσ
∂L N
i i i i

∂β ∂σ
i i
i =1 i

APPLICATION TO TRAFFIC FLOWS

The Problem Considered

The basic problem considered in this paper is whether traffic flows and congestion in one of

Athens’ main traffic corridors has increased over the last 4 years; furthermore, with the 2004

Olympic Games fast approaching, it is imperative to determine whether key road axes that will

serve as main gateways for the Olympic Family are approaching congestion or whether policy

measures instituted by the authorities have begun to show an effect in tapering congestion.

For information purposes, it is noted that the urban area of Athens, the capital of Greece,

has an area of 60 km2 and a population of approximately 3.8 million people. During the last

decade the population in the greater Athens area has increased by about 10% while at the same

time car ownership has increased considerably, approaching 310 automobiles per 1000

inhabitants. This has led to an increase in travel time by 26% in the last 12 years which has

resulted in the deterioration of traffic conditions in the capital. Overall, planning authorities had

to deal with a 3.5% annual increase in traffic for the last ten years. An increasing proportion of

the signalized intersection approaches in the center of the city is highly congested (levels of

service E-F). Obviously, travel times in such a congested network are quite long, and the

potential problems, especially during periods of high demand, can be insurmountable.

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 The Data

Background
A dynamic traffic map and ATIS for the central Athens area has been operating since 1996. As a

first attempt to meet driver information needs, travel time information is given over the internet

updated every 15 minutes. To do this, 6 origin points have been defined at the major city

entrances, from which a total of 17 possible (commonly used) routes have been considered.

Speeds and travel times along these 17 routes are being estimated using flow and occupancy data

collected directly from the 140 controllers installed in various points of the down-town urban

network. These are single (inductive) loops measuring traffic volume and queue presence at an

average distance of 80 m from the stop line.

Raw data covering traffic volumes and occupancies are selected by sensors of the Urban

Traffic Control Center (UTCC) and arrive to the special processing facilities of the National

Technical University of Athens (NTUA) every 90 seconds. All data are batch processed, with a

combination of specific tools and algorithms. Data integrity is ensured by the controllers

themselves as malfunctioning loops default shortly to the value of 255 and they are

not taken into account in the analysis period or thereafter. Data quality control is provided

automatically by the data management software that performs screening and data repair

functions. The processed data files are then transmitted using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

procedure from the batch processing enviroment to the UNIX based Web Server of the NTUA

School of Civil Engineering (FCE) via the University’s telematics (ISDN) network. Combining

all the information contained in the data files, ten Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) images are

generated. These are included in Web Pages of the NTUA Faculty of Civil Engineering Web

Server giving access to information on the traffic situation in Athens to Internet users.

The first two GIF images contain volume and congestion data for the entire central

Athens urban area. The remaining eight GIFs (four for volume and four for congestion) are

blown-up parts of the network, generated along with the main image every quarter of an hour via

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 a UNIX script. Users can have access to those blown-up parts by clicking on a part of the main

image in the Web Page (The final result is available at the address: www/transport.ntua.gr/map)

The Database
Data on traffic flow and occupancies are collected, as already mentioned, at 90 sec intervals at

140 locations around Athens, continuously since 1996. All this data has been stored and is

available for analysis. For the purposes of this analysis further manual checking was performed.

Detail police records were used to exclude periods were major or minor events (e.g.

demonstrations) or incidents external to normal traffic operations (e.g. roadworks) had been

reported. In an effort to reduce the size of the data set to be processed without losing much

essential information, a new data set was created containing occupancy measurements (at 90

second intervals) for the first two months (January and February) of the years 1998 – 2001. This

yielded more than 15,000 measurements for each of the 17 cross-sections along a part of the

eastern section of the Olympic Ring that is examined in this study (Figure 1). To make more

practical sense of the results, and after preliminary testing indicated this to be a statistically

acceptable approach, data were further aggregated into directions: occupancy toward the city

center (direction NE to SW) and toward the Olympic Stadium (the Olympic Stadium is in the

opposite direction from the city center; in this paper only the results for the direction toward the

Olympic Stadium are presented (direction SW to NE) – the results for the other direction are

available from the authors upon request). All data refer to 4 measuring locations along the

aforementioned corridor (shown by arrows in Figure 1). The distance between the first and the

last location is 4100m, with intermediate distances between the first and the second, the second

and the third etc, equal to 1900m, 1200m and 1000m respectively.

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 The Methodological Approach
As previously mentioned, the main goal of this study is to demonstrate the potential applications

of Extreme Order Statistics to transportation problems. The case study selected for this

demonstration is the problem of traffic exceedance (a precursor or indicator of congestion) along

one of Athens’ major roadway corridors that serves not only a large part of the daily commuting

activity, but is also part of the Olympic Ring and will serve as a major artery for the Olympic

visitors in the 2004 Games. The goal is to examine whether congestion has increased since 1998,

or whether measures instituted by the traffic authorities have been effective; to achieve this, the

main parameter considered is that of a trend. That is, interest in this study focuses around

determining the existence of a trend in congestion over the past four years. In light of the

discussion in the previous Section, the approach taken here is to fit the model:

yi = α + bti + ε i , 1 ≤ i ≤ n (6)

where yi is the exceedance magnitude for the ith observation (occupancy magnitude above the

92% threshold), α is the constant, ti is the time trend for the ith observation (ti = 1,…, n, where n

= total number of observations), and the ith residual ε i is assumed to come from a distribution in

the Generalized Pareto family (Eq. 3).

Estimation Results
Three basic models were fitted to the data: the first was a least squares model fitted to the entire

data set; the second was again a least squares model fitted to the exceedances data (as previously

noted, exceedance is considered any occupancy value over 92% and clearly indicates the onset

of congestion); the third was the model shown in Eq. (6) fitted again to the exceedances data

using maximum likelihood estimation. The results for all three models are presented in Table 1.

It should be noted here that the Generalized Gamma Model (GGM) was initially estimated as the

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 distribution of the error terms in the third model. Then, since most of the other widely used

parametric forms of the Generalized Pareto distribution (such as the Exponential, the Beta, the

Weibull, the Standard Gamma, the Reverse Weibull, etc.) are nested within the GGM model,

they were evaluated using the likelihood ratio test. In most cases, as can be seen in Table 1, the

Reverse Weibull model could not be rejected and fitted the data very well and better than all

other models (this result was also reached using graphical diagnostics not shown in this paper).

Interestingly, Heckert et al. (21) found the Reverse Weibull as the “best” fitting distribution to

hurricane speeds since its upper tail is finite, lending itself well to modeling phenomena bounded

from above (in the occupancy case examined here, 100% occupancy can be considered as the

upper bound).

The results are very interesting. First, it appears that both the sign and the magnitude of

the trend term vary between the models estimated. Second, the least squares estimated trend

varies significantly between the full and the extreme values/exceedances (congestion) data set as

shown in the second and third columns of Table 1. Third, the trend term demonstrates marked

differences for some loops within given daily time periods. For example, congestion has

increased at loop 67 at similar magnitudes for all time periods; the estimated, via Maximum

Likelihood, slope coefficient is between 0.57 and 0.99. Congestion has remained unchanged at

loop 70, while it has increased significantly for most periods (excluding the period 13:30-17:00)

at loop 93. Interestingly, traffic at loop 87 has decreased for the morning peak period (06:30-

10:00) and for the early afternoon (13:30-17:00), but shows a large increase for the late morning

(10:00-13:30) and afternoon peak (17:00-20:30) periods.

It is also worth noting that had the trend term been estimated via simple least squares the

results would have been statistically both biased and inconsistent for both data sets. This is a

typical example of estimation errors that occur when either an inappropriate technique is used to

analyze a given data set, or when a wrong functional form is specified during estimation (for a

more elaborate discussion see Washington et al. (22)). Of-course, since this study focuses on

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 extreme loadings that are indicative of congestion trends, the extreme values (exceedances) data

set is more appropriate. A least squares estimation on the congestion data yields similar results

as those of Eq. (6) for loop 67, but largely contradictory results for all other loops. Least squares

estimation for loop 70, for example, would suggest a decreasing trend in congestion rather than

no trend (estimated from Eq. (6)), and would also suggest no trend (or slightly decreasing) for

loop 93 instead of an increasing one.

CONCLUSIONS
As is well known, most of the commonly used statistical models are based on explaining and

predicting “average behavior”; that is, most models are built around explaining and predicting

the outcome of the mean of the available data. And, while this approach is very satisfactory in

modeling most of the commonly encountered problems there are, many times, transportation

problems that deal with boundary conditions. These conditions can be, for example, congested

traffic, speed limit violators, extreme terminal delays, etc. In particular, severe traffic conditions

that may lead to a general network breakdown can be seen and treated as a physical calamity.

From a methodological standpoint all these problems have been dealt either by using the

commonly available statistical analysis tools or by discarding the observations (outliers)

altogether. But, an important question needs to be addressed: do outliers (also called extreme

values) contain information that can be useful in practice and are there any statistical techniques

that provide for their modeling? As such, the first part of this paper offered a short exposition of

the fundamental principles governing the analysis of extreme values and, in second offered a

traffic example of how the use of extreme value analysis can improve on the results of more

commonly used statistical techniques.

The analysis of Extreme Order Statistics (Extreme Values) may be described, in broad

terms, as an effort to make statistical inferences about the extreme values in a population or a

random process. This analysis is based on two fundamental principles: first, the generalized

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TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM Paper revised from original submittal.
 extreme value distribution can be fitted to minima and/or maxima (that is, the minimum and/or

maximum value of a given series for a given time period) and, second, the generalized Pareto

distribution can be fitted to exceedances of a given measure over a threshold value. Using these

two principles inferences and predictions can be made regarding extreme values (outliers). To

demonstrate the principles of extreme value analysis, this paper presented a case study of traffic

congestion in downtown Athens, Greece.

The basic problem considered in this paper is whether traffic flows and congestion in

one of Athens’ main traffic arteries has increased over the last 4 years; further, with the 2004

Olympic Games fast approaching, it is imperative to determine whether key road axes that will

serve as main gateways for the Olympic Family are approaching endemic congestion conditions

or whether policy measures instituted by the authorities have begun to show an effect in tapering

congestion. To estimate this trend in congestion, two basic models were estimated: first, a least

squares models was fit, and then an extreme values trend model was estimated (via maximum

likelihood estimation). The results were very poignant. It appears, rather conclusively, that both

the sign and the magnitude of the trend term vary between the models estimated. Had the

commonly used least squares estimates been used to determine the trend the results would have

pointed toward either no increase in congestion or slight decrease. Extreme value techniques

point toward an increase in congestion, a finding with tremendous policy implications. Although

this case study is only a first step in demonstrating the usefulness of extreme value analyses in

transportation problems, it is hoped that more researchers will make use of the available

statistical tools and gain a deeper understanding of the occurrence of extreme events.

REFERENCES
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Environmental Engineering: Extreme Values. Kluwer Academic Publishers, New York.

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 3. Reiss, R.D. and Thomas, M. (2001) Statistical Analysis of Extreme Values 2nd Ed.
Birkhauser, Germany.
4. Gumbel, E. J. (1958) Statistics of Extremes. Columbina University Press, New York.
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largest or smallest numbers of a sample. Procceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,
24, 180-190.
6. Prescott, P. and Walden, A.T. (1980) Maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters of
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and Simulation, 16, 241-250.
8. Hosking, J.R.M. (1985) Algorithm AS 215: Maximum likelihood estimation of the
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9. Macleod, A.J. (1989) AS R76 – A remark on algorithm AS 215: Maximum likelihood
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10. Smith, R.L. (1985) Maximum likelihood estimation in a class of nonregular cases.
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11. Hoskinh, J.R.M., Wallis, J.R. and Wood, E.F. (1985) Estimation of the generalized extreme-
value distribution by the method of probability-weighted moments. Technometrics, 27, 251-261.
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Random Sequences and Series. Springer, New York.
13. Smith, R.L. (1986) Extreme value theory based on the r largest annual events, Journal of
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14. Tawn, J.A. (1988) An extreme-value theory model for dependent observations. Journal of
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15. Todorovic, P., and Zelenhasic, E. (1970). A stochastic model of flood analysis, Water
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plaines inondables, Colloque canadien d'hydrologie: inondations, pp. 279-288, Edmonton,
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 18. Smith, R.L. (1987) Estimating tails of probability distributions. Annals of Statistics, 15,
1174-1207.
19. Bensalah, Y. (2000) Steps in applying extreme value theory to finance: A review. Working
paper 2000-20, Bank of Canada.
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21. Heckert, N.A. and Simiu, E. (1998) Estimates of hurricane wind speeds by “Peaks over
Threshold” method. ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 124(4), 445-449.
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techniques for transportation data analysis, Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fl.

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 Table 1. Parameter Estimates for Various Trend Models
All Data Extreme Values (congestion Data)
GGM3 RW4
LSE1 LSE1 ML2 scale shape scale
5
Loop 93
06:30-20:30 4.2 -0.02 2.51 0.02 2.6
06:30-10:00 7.6 ns 1.72 0.04 -4.6
10:00-13:30 3.7 ns 4.66 0.051
13:30-17:00 1.1 ns ns
17:00-20:30 0.9 -0.6 4.73 0.048
Loop 87
06:30-20:30 -1.3 ns 1.1 0.037
06:30-10:00 0.7 ns -1.94 0.03
10:00-13:30 -0.3 0.8 4.23 0.011
13:30-17:00 -0.7 ns -0.8 0.042
17:00-20:30 -2.5 0.7 2.94 0.027
Loop 67
06:30-20:30 0.97 1 0.84 0.03 1.85
06:30-10:00 1.23 0.8 0.87 0.048
10:00-13:30 0.61 0.9 0.94 0.051
13:30-17:00 NS 0.7 0.57 0.053
17:00-20:30 1.92 1.01 0.99 0.043
Loop 70
06:30-20:30 -1.92 -1.6 ns
06:30-10:00 1.1 ns ns
10:00-13:30 -4.7 -3.4 ns
13:30-17:00 0.7 ns ns
17:00-20:30 -0.7 -3.9 ns
1
Least Squares Estimate for the trend term
2
Maximum Likelihood Estimates for the trend term
3
Generalized Gamma Model
4
Reverse (Negative) Weibull
5
ns denotes no statistical significance (90% significance level)

17
TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM Paper revised from original submittal.
 Figure 1: Loop detector location sequence along the SW to NE corridor

18
TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM Paper revised from original submittal.