The problem of imputation of the missing data from the continuous counts of road traffic

Missing traffic data is an important issue for road administration. Although numerous ways can be found to impute them in foreign literature (inter alia, the most effective method, that is Box-Jenkins models), in Poland, still only proven and simplified methods are applied. The article presents the analyses including an assessment of the completeness of the existing traffic data and works related to the construction of SARIMA model. The study was conducted on the basis of hourly traffic volumes, derived from the continuous traffic counts stations located in the national road network in Poland (Golden River stations) from the years 2005 – 2010. As a result, the proposed model was used to impute the missing data in the form of SARIMA (1.1,1)(0,1,1)168. The newly developed model can be used effectively to fill in the missing required days of measurement for estimating AADT by AASHTO method. In other cases, due to its accuracy and laboriousness of the process, it is not recommended.