Network

This report reviews the tools that monitor, measure and evaluate the performance of the road network, for both arterials and freeways. The interest in measurement and evaluation tools for the overall network is mainly driven by the need to operate the existing network even more efficiently. The range of measurement and evaluation tools for freeways and arterials are still emerging with the current tools best described as the first generation. The really useful feature in the first generation of the tools is their ability to simply represent data in a graphical or tabular format, enabling users to quickly detect trends and patterns that were in the past quite difficult to identify. As practitioners and researchers become more familiar with the historical patterns, then more information and new insights will be revealed about the performance of the network, the critical bottlenecks and the factors that contribute to the flow breakdowns. The resultant information arising from the use of measurement and evaluation tools will provide an avenue for the same information to be fed back to road users in the form of travel information.