Effect of Road Construction Projects on Travel Time Reliability

Road construction projects have a significant effect on the operational performance of the roads (say, freeways) leading to an increase in congestion and delay during the construction period. The operational performance may or may not be better after the construction of the project. The effect could vary by the type of road project, day-of-the-week, and time-of-the-day. Therefore, the goal of this research paper is to examine the effect of road construction projects before, during, and after the construction to improve mobility of people and goods. Construction activity data during the years 2011–2016 for Charlotte, North Carolina, was gathered from traffic incident management systems (TIMS). Travel time data for the same years was obtained from a private data source. The data are processed and analyzed to examine travel time and travel time variations before, during, and after the construction of each selected road project along the route with the road project.