Exploring Correlations between Travel Time Based Measures by Year, Day-of-the-week, Time-of-the-day, Week-of-the-Year and the Posted Speed Limit

This research explores correlations between travel time-based measures, comprehensively, by year, day-of-the-week (DoW), time-of-the-day (ToD), week-of-the-year (WoY), and the posted speed limit using raw one-minute interval travel time data for 3,290 road links in Charlotte, North Carolina. The data were processed, normalized, and categorized into 57 datasets accounting for the year, DoW, ToD, WoY, and the posted speed limit. Pearson correlation coefficient matrices were generated to explore the correlations between travel time measures (minimum, maximum, and average; 10th, 15th, 50th, 85th, 90th, and 95th percentile travel times), travel time reliability measures (buffer time – BT, buffer time index – BTI, planning time index – PTI, and travel time index – TTI), and travel time variability measures (based on 90th, 85th, 15th and 10th percentile travel times). The percentages based on scores associated with the correlations were also examined. Travel time measures and travel time variability measures are moderately or highly correlated with each other. BT is moderately or highly correlated with all other measures, while the correlation between BTI, PTI and TTI and travel time measures is relatively low. There is a positive correlation between BTI and PTI and a negative correlation between BTI and TTI in most instances