Beach-bound travelers should expect heavier traffic this Memorial Day weekend (David Trozz/MDOT)
Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer and the beginning of the busy summer travel season. For many that means hitting the roads to reach their destination. To help travelers plan a smooth trip, the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) and the State Highway Administration (SHA) prepare and share holiday travel forecasts with the best times to travel.
“It’s a two-part look in terms of volume and travel times that gives us confidence in the window of congestion,” said Rob Pangborn, Traffic Engineer Consultant with MDTA’s Office of Engineering and Construction. Pangborn is part of the team that uses data collected from previous years to help forecast the best times to cross the Bay Bridge.
To find the volume, he starts by accessing information from traffic data recorders on both sides of the bridge. These recorders have radar sensors that count the number of passing vehicles on the Eastern and Western shores. Pangborn can see the number of vehicles that crossed the Bay Bridge, including in which direction, and can break down the numbers hour by hour and day by day.
A graph showing projected hourly traffic volume estimates for the Bay Bridge Eastbound Lanes over Memorial Day Weekend (Maryland Transportation Authority)
To forecast for how many vehicles will cross the Bay Bridge this Memorial Day weekend, he relied on data surrounding the holiday weekend in previous years. The team then looked for any anomalies like incidents or other disruptions to traffic flow to help see the total volume on an hourly basis. Lastly, Pangborn factored in a 2% growth in traffic volume from the year before to get the total. This is how MDTA’s Office of Engineering and Construction reached its estimation of just over 340,000 vehicles crossing over the Bay Bridge this holiday weekend.
For figuring out the best time to travel, MDTA and SHA access data from the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology (CATT) Laboratory at the University of Maryland. Specifically, the teams pull data and use tools from the CATT Lab’s Regional Integrated Transportation Information System, or RITIS, which archives all the data including crashes, speeds, queues, work zones and locations of disabled vehicles dating back to the early 2000s.
By using historical data, researchers can predict what traffic might be like this upcoming holiday weekend based on how many people have driven during the same holiday in recent years.
“The goal is to inform travelers,” said Michael Pack, CATT Lab Founder. “A well-informed traveler is the best tool for making the roads safer and more efficient.”
Pack believes with this information the public may choose to travel during other time periods. “You don’t have to change everyone’s behavior to impact traffic patterns, just change a small percentage of the population for traffic to get better,” he said.
Graphic showing best times to travel over the Bay Bridge for the Memorial Day holiday (MDOT)
MDTA and SHA look at the same historical data to predict travel forecasts for other busy travel holidays like Thanksgiving. States including Texas and Georgia have adopted their own holiday travel forecasts using RITIS and tools Maryland put together.
If you plan to hit the road this Memorial Day weekend, you can find the best times to travel and our safety tips here.
Meredith Devereux is a Senior Writer with the Maryland Department of Transportation.
