Highway Regional Classification Method Based on Traffic Flow Characteristics for Highway Safety Assessment

Area of Science:

• Transportation Engineering
• Traffic Safety Analysis
• Regional Planning

Background:

• Objective highway classification is crucial for tailored safety assessments.
• Existing methods lack consideration of traffic flow characteristics for safety analysis.
• South Korea's administrative divisions offer a basis for regional classification.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an objective and practical highway classification method for South Korea.
• To evaluate this method using traffic flow data and administrative divisions.
• To enhance the development of region-specific highway safety assessment tools.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 536 permanent traffic volume counting stations in South Korea (2019).
• Employed factor and cluster analyses on the ratio of annual average hourly traffic volume to annual average daily traffic.
• Conducted two-sample goodness-of-fit tests to assess statistical significance.

Main Results:

• The proposed classification method showed a 61% concordance with urban, suburban, and rural areas defined by administrative divisions.
• Statistical tests confirmed significant differences in hourly volume ratio distributions across the three regions.
• The traffic flow ratio effectively differentiates highway regional characteristics.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method provides an objective and applicable approach for regional highway classification in South Korea.
• This classification can improve the accuracy and relevance of highway safety assessments.
• Facilitates the development of tailored safety tools like crash prediction models for specific regions.