Traffic demand forecast of road in Kigali, Rwanda

Abstract

Accurate forecasting of traffic demand is one of the most important issues in the feasibility study on highway projects. The existing traffic forecasting models, to some extent, have the problem of limited accuracy. In this study, two widely used methods which are Elastic Coefficient Method (ECM) and Motorized Travel Frequency Method (MTFM) were comprehensively applied to forecast the traffic volume in Kigali, Rwanda. And Comparative analysis was made between the forecasting result and the actual survey traffic result in the project's future years. Compared with the actual survey result, the predicted result of ECM is larger and relative error is 10.49%. The result of MTFM is smaller and relative error is -7.11%. While the weighted average of above methods is closer to the actual result with a relative error in the interval of -5.00 to 5.00%. The research has shown that the combined forecast method proposed in this study, which can make up the defects in accuracy of single model, is easy to operate and owns more accuracy in traffic prediction. This study has suggested that proper combination of several methods would be an advisable trend for the traffic demand forecasting. © Maxwell Scientific Organization, 2013.