TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD 1617 Paper No.

98-1115 69

Annual Average Daily Traffic

Prediction Model for County Roads
DADANG MOHAMAD, KUMARES C. SINHA, THOMAS KUCZEK,
AND CHARLES F. SCHOLER

A traffic prediction model that incorporates relevant demographic vari-
ables for county roads was developed. Field traffic data were collected
from 40 out of 92 counties in Indiana. The selection of a county was
based on population, state highway mileage, per capita income, and the
presence of interstate highways. Three to four automatic traffic counters
were installed in each selected county. Most counters installed on the
selected road sections were based on the standard 48-hour traffic counts.
Then, the obtained average daily traffic was converted to annual average
daily traffic by means of adjustment factors. Multiple regression analy-
sis was conducted to develop the model. There were quantitative and
qualitative predictor variables used in the model development. To vali-
date the developed model, additional field traffic data were collected
from eight randomly selected counties. The accuracy measures of the val-
idation showed the high accuracy of the model. The statistical analyses
also found that the independent variables employed in the model were
statistically significant. The number of independent variables included in
the model was kept to a minimum.
Traffic monitoring involves the collection of many types of data,
such as traffic volume, traffic composition, vehicle speeds, and
vehicle weights. One of the most important traffic-monitoring vari-
ables is the annual average daily traffic (AADT) for a section of
road. AADT is defined as the average, over a year, of the number of
vehicles that pass through a particular section of a road each day.
The most reliable approach to obtain the AADT values is to install
automatic traffic recorders (ATRs) at all sections of each road in the
networks. However, this is not a practical approach because of the
expense involved in purchasing and installing ATRs. This study
focuses on the problem of installing a limited number of ATRs to
estimate AADT on county roads, which are not currently monitored
by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT).
The common approach for developing the AADT prediction
model is multiple linear regression. Prediction of AADT on road sec-
tions is a difficult task as it is dependent on many variables. However,
a desirable traffic prediction model is the one that requires the least
number of independent variables to monitor. The AADT prediction
model must be reasonably easy and economical to use. The devel-
oped traffic prediction model should also produce information for
decision makers in a form that does not require extensive training to
understand.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
All states maintain ongoing traffic-monitoring programs on the state
highways for planning, estimating vehicle miles traveled, tracking
D. Mohamad, K. C. Sinha, and C. F. Scholer, Department of Civil Engi-
neering, and T. Kuczek, Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN 47907.
volume trends, and conducting traffic engineering analysis (1). In
contrast, there is no program of a similar nature available for county
roads. Traffic monitoring on county roads is not a responsibility of
state departments of transportation. Instead, it is a responsibility of
county highway departments.
Several studies have been conducted for INDOT to forecast AADT
on the state highway systems (2–4). Since INDOT maintains traffic-
monitoring programs on the state highway systems and records the
traffic counts continuously each year, the development of traffic fore-
casting models for the state highway systems is possible. However,
little attention has been focused on the prediction of daily traffic on
county roads due to lack of traffic records.
Traffic forecasting methodology is highly advanced at the urban
level. Most large metropolitan areas have developed and imple-
mented a fairly sophisticated set of computer-based travel simula-
tion models based on the common four-step process. At the county
level, however, this process is not nearly so advanced. Most county
roads carry a low average daily traffic (ADT) volume. Therefore, an
easy-to-implement traffic prediction model is believed to be desirable
for local agencies.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Estimation of AADT
Normally, the estimation of AADT on county roads, if available, is
obtained by a short-duration count. The standard short duration that
has been applied in some counties is 48 hours, taken some time
during the period between Monday noon and Friday noon. Then, the
observed traffic data are multiplied by adjustment (monthly varia-
tion) factors. This method assumes that the traffic on county roads
has little daily or weekly variation, and, consequently, only monthly
adjustment factors are considered. In addition, it is also assumed
that there are few vehicles with more than two axles on county
roads, and, therefore, no adjustment factor for the number of axles
is applied.
Traffic Prediction Models
An elasticity-based approach is the most commonly used approach
in the development of prediction models. It was applied to develop
traffic prediction models for the rural state highway systems in New
York (5). The models predicted future-year AADT as a function of
base-year AADT, modified by various demographic factors. It was
found that each functional class model had different significant fac-
tors. For example, for the interstate traffic prediction model, AADT
70 Paper No. 98-1115
was a function of county automobiles and town households. For the
principal arterial model, AADT was a function of county house-
holds and town population; and for the minor arterial and major
collector model, AADT was a function of town households.
A similar study was conducted in Indiana to develop traffic
prediction models for rural state highways (2). Factors suspected to
influence traffic—population, vehicle registration, and employment—
were considered independent variables in the model development.
There was no test for the appearance of collinearity problem in
either study mentioned above. The principal component analysis
that can remedy the collinearity problem was introduced in other
Indiana studies (3,4). It was found that the elasticity-based model
was more efficient than the principal component model.
There were several other studies that applied regression analysis.
In the Kentucky study (6 ), a model to forecast highway traffic vol-
umes on the state highway systems was developed in a two-step
modeling process. In the first step, a linear regression related aver-
age travel to personal income, fuel price, and total miles of streets
and highways. In the second step, cross-tabulation models related
site-specific traffic growth to statewide ADT.
In the Minnesota study (7 ), the use of regression analysis for esti-
mating AADT for road sections was investigated. Seven potential
predictor variables of traffic volume were chosen from the Min-
nesota Department of Transportation road-log database. The vari-
ables considered were county population, number of lanes, width of
road section, two-category qualitative variable indicating whether
there is control of access to road section, four-category qualitative
variable indicating road functional class, five-category qualitative
variable indicating availability status of road section to trucks, and
three-category qualitative variable indicating type of locale.
Some other factors that were assumed to affect traffic growth pat-
tern were investigated in a study (8) that included geographic loca-
tion, type and width of pavement, proximity to an urban area, and
types of services the roadway provides.
All of the studies mentioned did not develop traffic prediction
models for county roads due to the unavailability of county road
traffic data. In the present study, an effort has been made to collect
traffic data on county roads. All the methodologies used in the afore-
mentioned studies, especially the analysis applied in the Minnesota
study, were adopted in the present study’s model development.
METHODOLOGY
The most commonly used form of a multiple regression equation is
as follows:
AADTi = β 0 + β1 Xi1 + L L + β j Xij + ε i (1)
where
AADTi = the value of the dependent variable in the ith observation,
i = 1, . . . , n,
Xij = the value of the jth independent variable in the ith
observation,
j = 1, . . ., m,
β0 = constant term,
βj = regression coefficient for the jth independent variable,
« = error term,
n = observation number, and
m = number of independent variables.
TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD 1617
The validation of the selected regression model is required in the
model development. Collection of new data was conducted in the
present study to check its predictive ability. Validation of a fitted
regression is the demonstration or confirmation that the model is
sound and effective for the purpose for which it was intended. Val-
idation of the model requires assessing the effectiveness of the fit-
ted equation against an independent set of data and is essential if
confidence in the model is to be expected.
Bias and variance are sometimes incorporated into a single
measure called the mean squared prediction error (MSPR). MSPR is
defined as the average squared difference between independent obser-
vations and predictions from the fitted equation for the corresponding
values of the independent variables.
∑ (Yi − Yˆi )
n* 2
MSPR = i =1
(2)
n*
where
Yi = the value of the response variable in the ith validation case,
Ŷi = the predicted value for the ith validation case based on the
model-building data set; and
n* = the number of cases in the validation data set.
If the MSPR is fairly close to the mean squared error (MSE) based
on the regression fit to the model-building data set, then the error
mean square MSE for the selected regression model is not seriously
biased and gives an appropriate indication of the predictive ability
of the model. If the MSPR is much larger than the MSE, one should
rely on the mean squared prediction error as an indicator of how well
the selected regression model will predict in the future.
VARIABLE DESCRIPTION
Response Variable
The only response variable that needed to be predicted was AADT of
county roads. In the present study, the standard 48-hour traffic counts
or coverage count stations were installed to collect daily traffic vol-
ume on county roads. The automatic traffic counters were installed
within 40 selected counties from February to August of 1996.
Independent Variables
These independent variables are generally county characteristics:
• County Population (CPOP)—The County and City Data Book
(9) provides county population values. These variables were taken
as independent variables on the assumption that AADT is dependent
on the number of people living nearby.
• County Households (CHH)—The number of occupied housing
units is the same as the number of households. The data can be
obtained from the County and City Data Book (9).
• County Vehicle Registration (CVR)—The total number of
vehicle registrations in the county where a road segment is located
is published each year (10).
• County Employment (CEMP)—County employment, which
can also be obtained from the County and City Data Book (9), is an
economic variable.
Mohamad et al.
• County Per Capita Income (CPCI)—Similar to employment, it
is believed that daily traffic will increase as the per capita income
increases. The County and City Data Book (9) provides the per capita
income at the state and county level.
• County State Highway Mileage (CSHM), Arterial Mileage
(ART), and Collector Mileage (COLL)—CSHM, ART, and COLL
are adopted on the assumption that there exists a significant relation-
ship between state highway mileage and AADT on county roads. It
is assumed that the more state highway mileage that is available,
the less daily traffic there is on county roads due to the different
pavement condition between state roads and nonstate roads. These
variables were obtained from INDOT (11).
• Location (LOCALE)—Location is a variable that indicates type
of locale, rural or urban. This variable is assumed to have a signifi-
cant relationship with AADT. A county road within urban areas
will carry more daily traffic than a county road within rural areas.
The urban and rural classifications are based on population size.
Roads located in areas with a population of fewer than 5,000 are clas-
sified as rural roads. Otherwise, the roads in those areas with a pop-
ulation of more than 5,000 are classified as small urban to urbanized
roads (3,12).
• Presence of Interstate Highways (INT)—More than half of the
counties in Indiana—40 out of 92 counties—have no interstate seg-
ments within their county (11). Even though most interstate systems
have no exits on the county roads, it is assumed that daily traffic
using the interstate highways will divert if the county roads provide
a shortcut to the final destination.
• Accessibility (ACCESS)—It is obvious that a county road that
has an easy access to the state highway system will have more daily
traffic than a county road that has difficult access. The term easy
means that a county road is closest to the state systems or closest to
an urban area.
AADT PREDICTION MODEL
Many predictor variables of interest in traffic prediction models are
quantitative. These quantitative variables are county population,
households, employment, width of road section, per capita income,
gas consumption, and vehicle registration. However, there are some
common predictor variables of interest in traffic prediction models
that are qualitative. Examples of common qualitative predictor vari-
ables in the traffic study are functional class, access control, quali-
tative variable indicating locale, and qualitative variable indicating
availability status of road section to trucks (7 ).
AADT Database
Three of the 11 considered variables were qualitative, requiring
three indicator variables. A description of all variables included in
the analysis follows.
• AADT (Y)—the only response variable that will be predicted;
• LOCALE (X1)—1 = urban; 0 = rural;
• ACCESS (X2)—1 = easy access or close to the state highway;
0 = otherwise;
• INT (X3)—1 = having interstate; 0 = none;
• CPOP (X4)—county population;
• CSHM (X5)—total state highway mileage of a county;
• CPCI (X6)—per capita income;
Paper No. 98-1115 71
• CHH (X7)—total households;
• CVR (X8)—total vehicle registration of a county;
• CEMP (X9)—total employment;
• ART (X10)—total arterial mileage of a county;
• COLL (X11)—total collector mileage of a county.
Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics, including the mean, standard deviation, min-
imum, and maximum values of each variable, were generated by the
SAS procedure MEANS (13). The outlying values of a variable
were detected by investigating its standard deviation since it cannot
resist the influence of extreme observations. It is sensitive to the
influence of a few extreme observations, such as outliers.
Relationships between Pairs of Variables
The correlations between AADT and X1 and that between AADT
and X2 were 0.55 and 0.46, respectively, indicating that the AADT
was significantly influenced by the location and accessibility of the
roads. The correlations between AADT and X4, X7, X8, and X9 were
0.32, 0.30, 0.31, and 0.30, respectively, indicating that the correlation
between AADT and these four demographic variables was also sig-
nificant. However, these four variables showed a high correlation to
each other.
The correlation between AADT and X10 was 0.35, indicating that
the AADT was affected by the total arterial mileage within the
county in which the road sections were located. The correlations
between AADT and X5 and X11, however, were rather marginal to
insignificant.
Model Development
Full Model
An initial regression fit of a first-order model with ordinary least
squares, using all 11 predictor variables, was conducted. A funda-
mental assumption underlying multiple linear regression analyses is
that all random errors have the same variance (14). Outliers may be con-
sidered a special case of unequal variances since such observations
may have very large variances.
The inclusion of a large number of variables in a regression model
will result in multicollinearity. It often results in coefficient esti-
mates that have large variances with consequent lack of statistical
significance or they have incorrect signs (15). One of the statistics
that is commonly used to ascertain the degree and nature of multi-
collinearity is the variance inflation factor (VIF). The results of the
SAS procedure REG with the VIF option and the SAS procedure
PLOT are presented in Figures 1 and 2, respectively.
Regression diagnostics for this initial fit suggested several prob-
lems. First, the variance inflation factors of some variables were
very large, indicating that some predictor variables may be involved
in the multicollinearities. The variance inflation factor is defined as
1/(1 − R2), where R2 is the coefficient of multiple determination. In
Figure 1, the regression R2 was 0.4644. Since 1/(1 − R2) = 1.87, any
variables associated with VIF values exceeding 1.87 were more
closely related to the other independent variables. It can be observed
that most predictor variables have a VIF value greater than 1.87.
FIGURE 1 First-order regression model with all 11 predictor variables.

FIGURE 2 Plot of residual against predicted value of Y.

Mohamad et al.
Second, due to the presence of serious multicollinearity, non-
significant results in individual tests on the regression coefficient can
happen. For example, only two predictor variables were found to be
significant in the regression results above. Multicollinearity increases
the instability of the coefficient estimates (16 ). One approach to
remedy the multicollinearity problem is to express the model in terms
of centered independent variables.
Finally, the residual plot against predicted values revealed that the
error variance was not constant. Figure 2 shows a prototype picture
of residual plots when the error variance increases with predictor
variables. This type of departure from constancy of the error vari-
ance is called the megaphone type. The plot suggests that the larger
the predicted value of Y, the more spread out the residuals are.
Transformation on the response variable for stabilizing the error
variance is conducted in the following section.
Variable Transformations
To remedy unequal error variances from a regression analysis, a
transformation on Y was conducted. The most common transforma-
tion form is the logarithmic transformation Y ′ = log10 Y, in this study
Y ′ = log10 (AADT). Such a transformation on Y may, at the same
time, also help normalize the error terms.
To remedy a multicollinearity problem, a centering on the pre-
dictor variables is one of the most common approaches. Centering
the variables places the intercept at the means of all the variables.
Therefore, if the variables have been centered, the intercept has no
effect on the multicollinearity of the other variables (17 ). Centering
involves taking the difference between each observation and the
mean of all observations for the variables.
Variable Selection
Since many of the variables appeared to be unimportant and some
problems were encountered in the initial regression, subset selection
procedures to identify promising models were used. Several selec-
tion options are available in the SAS procedure REG. These options
are R-SQUARE, Cp Versus P Plot, Forward Selection, Backward
Elimination, and Stepwise Selection. Three of them were used in
this study.
First, the subset models were chosen using Backward Elimination
by starting with the full model and then eliminating at each step the
one variable whose deletion would cause the residual sum of squares
to increase the least. Some predictor variables were insignificant in the
first step so that they were deleted one by one from the model, begin-
ning from the smallest partial sum of squares or the largest P-value
until no further deletion was possible. At the end of the seventh step,
four predictor variables were found to be statistically significant.
These variables were X1, X2, X4, and X10, as defined earlier.
Second, an optimum subset model is one that, for a given num-
ber of variables, produces the minimum error sum of squares, or,
equivalently, the maximum R2. Conceptually, the only way to
ensure that the best model for each subset size has been found is to
examine all possible subset regressions. This procedure, for m pre-
dictor variables, requires computing 2m equations for finding opti-
mum subsets for all subset sizes. Since this study has 11 predictor
variables, 2,048 regression equations must be evaluated in order to
find an optimum subset model. Fortunately, the SAS procedure
REG has an R-SQUARE option to provide such a computation.
Paper No. 98-1115 73
The subset models were ranked within each subset size from the
best to the worst fitting model.
The full model accounted for 76.6 percent of the variation in the
dependent variable AADT. Of the single-variable subsets, the first
best, X1 (location), accounted for 58.1 percent of the variation in
AADT, 18.5 percent below the maximum. The second best single-
variable subset, X2 (accessibility), accounted for 54.8 percent of the
variation in AADT. The best two-variable model, X1 and X2,
accounted for 72.6 percent, only 4 percent below the maximum.
It was also observed that R-SQUARE remained virtually
unchanged down to subsets of size four, indicating that the 4-variable
model including X1 (location), X2 (accessibility), X4 (total arterial
mileage in a county), and X10 (county population)(similar to
the result of the backward elimination) may be most useful—with
R2 = 75.1 percent (1.5 percent below the maximum)—since the
remaining models, the 5-variable to the 10-variable models, increased
R2 by only 0.7 percent to 1.4 percent.
Third, the SAS procedure REG provides another variable selection
by plotting the Cp statistic versus P. The resulting plot for this study
appears in Figure 3. According to the literature (18), for any given
number of selected predictor variables, larger Cp values indicate equa-
tions with larger error mean squares. For any subset model Cp >
(p + 1), there is evidence of bias due to an incompletely specified
model. On the other hand, if there are values of Cp < (p + 1), the full
model is said to be overspecified, that is, it contains too many variables.
Figure 3 reveals that the first three subsets in which their Cp val-
ues are greater than (p + 1) reflect the contribution of bias due to an
incomplete model or the omitted variables. The pattern of Cp val-
ues is quite typical for situations in which multicollinearity is seri-
ous. Beginning with P = 11 predictor variables, they initially
became smaller than ( p + 1) but eventually started to increase. In
this plot, there is a definite corner at P = 4, where the Cp values
increased rapidly with smaller subset size. Hence, a model with four
variables appeared to be a good choice. All four-variable models had
Cp values of less than (p + 1), indicating that these models could be
used for prediction. However, the first four-variable model, which
included X1, X2, X4, and X10, had the highest R2.
All variable selection methods gave the same result: the AADT
prediction model must include these four predictor variables. There-
fore, the regression model on these four predictor variables was
investigated in more detail in the following section.
Reduced Model
On the basis of the previous analyses, a model with four selected pre-
dictor variables, X1, X2, X4, and X10, was investigated. The regres-
sion on these four predictor variables is presented in Figure 4. This
figure shows that the multicollinearity greatly decreased compared
with the results in Figure 1. In Figure 4 the R2 is 0.7511 so the max-
imum VIF value was 1/(1 − 0.7511) = 4. All coefficients had a VIF
value of less than four, which indicated that multicollinearity did not
exist in the model. Further, all t-statistics showed the significance of
the estimated coefficients at the 5 percent level.
All coefficient signs were as expected. For example, the positive
sign for X1 indicated that urban county roads have more daily traf-
fic than rural county roads. Similarly, the positive sign for X2 indi-
cated that the easy-access county roads carry more traffic than the
difficult-access county roads. The positive sign for X4 showed that
the roads within a high-population county carry more traffic than the
roads within a low-population county. Finally, the negative sign for
 FIGURE 3 Cp versus P plot.

FIGURE 4 Regression for the best four-variable model.

Mohamad et al. Paper No. 98-1115 75

X10 indicated that the more arterial mileage there is within a county, of the error terms is slightly non-normal, which supports the previous
the less traffic there is on county roads. It is, therefore, expected that paragraph’s assertion.
drivers on local roads will divert as soon as they reach arterial roads.

Pre- and Postanalysis of Outliers

Diagnostics
An alternative model without two outliers was regressed. The results
The purpose of diagnostics is to exhibit the degree of appropriateness of this regression, including the regression of the full data model,
of the reduced model. In this section, a number of refined diagnostics are tabulated in Table 1 for comparison purposes.
for checking the adequacy of the reduced regression model were con- Both models had the constancy of error variances. The model
without two outliers fitted the assumption of normality and had R2
ducted. These include methods for detecting outliers, nonconstancy
larger than the R2 of the full data model. Therefore, this model was
of error variance, and nonnormality of error terms.
selected as a final model for the AADT prediction on paved county
roads. The model is written as follows:
Presence of Outliers Residual outliers can be identified from
Log10 ( AADT) = 4.82 + 0.82 X1 + 0.84 X2 + 0.24 Log ( X4)
residual plots against predicted values of the response variable and
from stem-and-leaf plots. − 0.46 Log ( X10) (3)
Both plots indicated that there were some outliers in the data set.
Two observations had a residual of more than one. A possible cause
of one observation was that the traffic counter did not count for a Model Validation
full 48-hour period, rather it was for only 28 hours due to early
removal of the counter by an unknown party. An outlier on another In the model development, the fitted regression model (Equation 3)
observation occurred probably because the traffic counter was was finally selected as the AADT prediction model for paved county
installed too close to the city of Indianapolis, whose population roads to check for validity. The applied means of model validation
was through the collection of new data of the response variable,
range was far beyond the values in this study.
which were then compared with the predicted values obtained from
the selected model.
Eight counties in Indiana were randomly selected to obtain
Nonconstancy of Error Variance If the model is correct, the
average daily traffic for validation purposes. These counties were
residuals should be without pattern or structure, which can be exam-
in addition to the previously selected 40 counties. However, their
ined by plotting the residuals against the predicted values. The results
independent variables’ values were still in the model range.
of this plot suggest the constancy of error variances. As mentioned
The validation method used was designed to calibrate the predic-
earlier, the logarithmic transformation on the response variable
tive capability of the selected regression model. To calibrate the pre-
helped stabilize the error variance.
dictive ability of the regression model fitted from the model-building
data set, the predicted values of the AADT were calculated by enter-
ing the validation data set into the model. The observed and predicted
Nonnormality of Error Terms The assumption of normality is
values of the AADT are presented in Table 2. Then, the mean
often made from a suitable normal distribution. Since the validity of
squared prediction error as in Equation 2 was calculated. Since log-
many results often depends on the validity of the normal assumption,
arithmic transformation was used in the model development, both
a test for normality was examined. The normality of the error terms
observed and predicted AADT were transformed into logarithmic
can be studied informally by examining the residuals in a variety of
form. The MSPR for the AADT prediction model was 0.0510.
graphic ways.
Since the MPSR did not differ greatly from the MSE obtained
The standard and widely used tests for normality are the Shapiro-
from the model-building data set, the selected regression model was
Wilk test and normal probability plots. The SAS procedure UNI-
not seriously biased and was an appropriate indication of the pre-
VARIATE was conducted in this study to test the normality of error
dictive ability of the model. These validation results supported the
terms for the best four-variable model. The normal probability plot
appropriateness of the model selected.
and the W-value obtained from UNIVARIATE procedure appear in
The percentage difference between the AADT observed from the
Figure 5. It shows that the W-value or the coefficient of correlation
counters and the AADT predicted from the models is discussed
between the ordered residuals and their expected values under nor-
here. The comparison of these two AADT is presented in Table 2.
mality was .9791. The small value of W leads to the rejection of the
The percentage difference between these two AADT values ranged
null hypothesis of normality. Controlling the α risk at 0.05, using
from 1.56 percent to 34.18 percent, with the average difference of
the table “Critical Values for Coefficient of Correlation Between
16.78 percent.
Ordered Residuals and Expected Values under Normality When
Distribution of Error Terms Is Normal” (14), the critical value for
n = 89 was determined as 0.9859. Since the observed coefficient was SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
lower than this level, the distribution of the error terms departed
slightly from a normal distribution. This study developed an efficient, inexpensive, and easy-to-use
The departure of error terms from a normal distribution was method to estimate the daily traffic on county roads. Multiple regres-
probably due to the presence of the previously discussed outliers in sion analysis was used to develop the AADT prediction model. It was
the data set. This was visually indicated by the normal probability found that transformation of the response variable and centering of the
plot in Figure 5. It is clear from Figure 5 that five observations devi- independent variables were required because all variables were not
ate from the expected straight line, indicating that the distribution normally distributed.
76 Paper No. 98-1115
FIGURE 5 W-value and normal probability plot.
Several variable selection methods in multiple regression analysis
were employed to select the best model in the building process. The
number of significant predictor variables was four. County popula-
tion and county arterial mileage were two quantitative significant fac-
tors; and location and accessibility were two qualitative significant
factors affecting the daily traffic on paved county roads.
R2 and normality assumption were adopted as the most useful cri-
teria to gauge the goodness of a statistical model. The R2 of the model
TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD 1617
was 0.77, which indicated that the four significant factors of the
model explained about 77 percent of the variability in AADT. The
W-value of the model under normality was 0.9865, indicating that
their error terms were normally distributed.
Some outliers were observed in data sets. These outliers were
analyzed in the model-building process. A model without outliers
was finally suggested for use by the county highway department for
the AADT prediction on its county roads. A validation of the mod-
Mohamad et al.
TABLE 1 Pre- and Postanalysis of Outliers
els through the collection of new traffic data from eight randomly
selected counties was conducted and the results showed that the
developed models produced predicted values of AADT close to the
observed values. The predictive ability of the models, which was cal-
culated as the MSPR, was 0.0510. Since the MSPR of the model did
not differ greatly from the MSE, the selected model was not seriously
biased and was an appropriate indication of the predictive ability of
the model. The MSE of the model obtained from the model-building
data set was 0.1606.
Multiple linear regression provided reasonable statistical results.
The traffic prediction models were developed as accurately as pos-
sible within the limitations of traffic data. All parameter estimates
were found to be statistically significant and had an expected sign.
It was found that no other variables would provide additional sig-
nificant predictive power in the models. The developed models
could be updated as new traffic data became available. The predic-
tive ability of the developed models was proven through model
validation, and the results supported the appropriateness of the
developed models.
TABLE 2 Observed and Predicted AADT
Paper No. 98-1115 77
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Publication of this paper sponsored by Committee on Transportation Plan-
ning Applications.