Assessment of Travel-Time Reliability and Operational Resilience of Metro Freeway Corridors

Abstract

This study estimated and analyzed the travel-time reliability (TTR) and traffic-flow measures of effectiveness (MOE) for 74 directional corridors in the metro freeway network in Twin Cities, Minnesota, from January 2018 to December 2023, for both morning and afternoon peak periods. The network-wide trends for both TTR and MOE indicate that the traffic flows in the Twin Cities freeway network have not reached the pre-pandemic level as of December 2023. The TTR and MOE estimation results were applied to identify a set of the most vulnerable routes in the current network. Further, the preliminary resilience model, developed in the previous phase, was enhanced and applied to determine the operational resilience of 74 directional corridors in the network and a set of the low-resilient routes were identified. The effects of the route-wide geometric configuration on TTR, MOE and operational resilience on individual corridors were also analyzed. The results from this research could provide the basis for geometric and operational improvements of the metro freeway corridors.