How to forecast traffic flow?

I am a technician who designs traffic flow detection instruments. If you want to forecast, you need to have traffic data (mainly natural quantity and proportion data) in the same period of last year and the same road section, and also consider holidays and large-scale activities. If you want to predict the average speed, you need to refer to the same weather and temperature in recent days, such as whether it rains heavily, freezes, fogs and so on.

At present, the commonly used method at home and abroad is to use automatic instruments to count the traffic flow (unattended). According to the national Class I equipment standard, the instrument needs to distinguish the vehicle types in 13 (minibus, large and medium-sized bus, minivan, medium-sized truck, large truck, oversize truck, cargo trailer, container truck, tractor, motorcycle, rickshaw, animal-drawn truck and bicycle).

If manual statistics are needed, it is very rare to set up 24-hour observation records at roadside artificial observation stations.