Generates typical weekday summaries of Caltrans PeMS Data. For transportation planning purposes, we seek to understand "typical" traffic conditions, which we define here to occur Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in the months of March, April, May, September, October, and November. Methods herein strive to process the PeMS data to inform estimates of typical weekday travel conditions over time.
The Consume directory processes a year's worth of data and then combines the annual summaries into a single database. The data is available in the pems-typical-weekday folder on Box. The data is presented via Tableau (see the .Twb files in the Summaries directory) both hourly and by (groups of hours) time period.
To use the Tableau workbooks, first download the hourly or time period data files from the pems-typical-weekday folder here. Then point the Tableau workbooks to local copies of the CSV file, rather than the data extract/csv my files point to (e.g., M:\Data\Traffic\PeMS\pems_period.tde or D:/files/Box Sync/Share Data/pems-typical-weekday/pems_period.csv).
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| station | PeMS Station ID. An integer value that uniquely indenties the Station Metadata. Use this value to 'join' other PeMS clearinghouse files that contain Station Metadata. |
| district | Caltrans district number. |
| route | Route number. |
| direction | Direction of travel. One of N, S, E, or W. |
| type | Lane type. Possible values: CD = Coll/Dist. CH = Conventional Highway. FF = Freeway-Freeway Connector. FR = Off Ramp. HV = HOV. ML = Mainline. OR = On ramp. |
| lanes | Total number of lanes. |
| latitude | Station latitude. |
| longitude | Station longitude. |
| state_pm | State postmile. |
| abs_pm | Absolute postmile. |
| time_period | Time periods. See MTC model time periods |
| year | |
| median_flow | |
| avg_flow | |
| sd_flow | |
| median_speed | |
| avg_speed | |
| sd_speed | |
| median_occup | |
| avg_occup | |
| sd_occupancy | |
| days_observed |