Short-Term Travel Time Prediction Using A Time-Varying Coefficient Linear Model ?

Effective prediction of travel times is central to many advanced traveler information and transportation management systems. In this article we propose a method to predict freeway travel times using a linear model in which the coefficients vary as smooth functions of the departure time. The method is straightforward to implement, computationally efficient and applicable to widely available freeway sensor data. We demonstrate its effectiveness by applying the method to two real-life loop detector data sets.