CATT Lab: Thanksgiving Travel Guide

The Problem

Thanksgiving Week has some of the busiest travel days of the year, impacting many of the Nation’s major roadways. And most recently, more and more travelers are opting to leave on Tuesday instead of the more traditional Wednesday, further extending travel impact.

The Solution

Leveraging RITIS and the PDA Suite, the CATT Lab developed a step-by-step “how-to” guide for agencies to create a driving forecast graphic (example shown for the Baltimore, MD region) that can be shared with the public ahead of the holidays:

Here’s a look at the tools that were used to help create this graphic.

Trend Map was used for dynamically assessing hourly congestion patterns that occurred during the week. Comparing animated maps side-by-side allows for quick identification of corridors most impacted by travel, spatially and temporally.

Congestion Scan provided the detail of congested conditions (including events that occurred) along a particular road, or, if using the multi-road feature, a travel corridor, allowing agencies to pinpoint problem areas and times.

Bottleneck Ranking provided comprehensive impact results of the worst bottlenecks in the region that occurred during the holiday week. Understanding where bottlenecks occurred and for how long allows for more informative travel advisories and better traffic management (eg; Safety Service Patrol deployments.)

Event Query Tool was used to generate a number of event & incident charts, maps and tabular summaries for an in-depth understanding of event/incident patterns, details and timelines. This information was used to develop cautionary “red flags” for advising drivers to be extra careful for traveling in the area, or on a specific roadway.