Overview
Travel time to a destination is a key piece of information that motorists want and need. It is vital for travelers to make good decisions about which route to take and whether to divert from their planned path. Technology now makes it feasible to provide drivers with real-time information about how long it will take to reach a given destination. While travel time information has traditionally been provided by transportation agencies only on major urban freeways, travel time messages are now being communicated on rural highways.
The collection of travel time data and proper dissemination is a challenging problem that deserves a systematic review. The purpose of this project is to identify, review, and synthesize information on current and potential future efforts in real-time travel time on rural highways:
- Identifying, reviewing, and synthesizing available and emerging technology (both nationally and internationally) for obtaining data necessary for calculating travel times on rural highways
- Collecting and summarizing agencies' experiences with using such technology
- Providing guidance to agencies for making the best use of available and emerging technologies to meet future needs
- Determining the feasibility of deploying such technologies.