Impacts of traffic conditions on the performance of road freight transport

The efficiency of road transport is typically influenced by factors such as, weather, choice of road, and time of day, and day of the week. Knowledge about interactions between different traffic- and transport related factors... [ view full abstract ]

The efficiency of road transport is typically influenced
by factors such as, weather, choice of road, and time
of day, and day of the week. Knowledge about interactions
between different traffic- and transport related factors and their
influence on the execution of transport is important in transport
planning. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of
different factors on the performance of road transport. We
aim to contribute to improved transport planning by analysing
traffic and transport data obtained from different sources in
order to support data driven decision making.
Through a review of existing literature and discussions with
a Swedish road transport operator, we identified factors that
could be relevant to consider when planning a transport, e.g.,
related to weather, location of roads where the transport will
take place, and planned time of the transport. As a result of
variation in size, type and volume of the data representing these
factors, suitable machine learning algorithms were selected,
such as Decision Stump, M5 model tree, M5 regression tree,
RepTree, M5 rules, and linear regression in order to study
the data. Our experimental results illustrate the complexity
associated to the performance of road transport systems mainly
because of the dependency between the choices of influencing
factors and geographic location of the road segment.