BENEFITS OF REAL-TIME TRAVEL TIME INFORMATION IN HOUSTON

This paper summarizes the benefits that the Houston metropolitan area can or will experience with the implementation of a probe-vehicle travel time surveillance system on the major freeways in the region. It has been shown that this probe vehicle approach provides data which are judged useful and accurate by drivers in the region and which can generate substantial diversion activity during incident conditions. The Texas Department of Transportation benefits from the availability of the travel time information and is passing this information directly to the motoring public through changeable message signs in north Houston so that drivers can make more informed route choice and diversion decisions. Probe vehicle travel time data are also shown to be capable of detecting incident congestion at a rate nearly comparable to that of inductive loop detector surveillance systems if conditions are favorable (mainly, an adequate number of probe vehicles and fairly heavy traffic volumes on the facility).