I'm having some trouble understanding the historical traffic instructions in network analyst, looking for clarity on two fronts.
The first - is a service area analysis in network analyst 'dynamic' when configured with historic traffic data? By that I mean, if we have travel times measured at intervals of 15 minutes, and I compute a service area of 60 minutes, does that mean network analyst will look to the travel times at 8:00AM, 8:15, 8:30, etc. as the trip progresses over the 60 minutes? Or does it just use a static measure of travel times at 8AM over the entire 60 minute analysis?
Second - I have to create my own historic traffic data tables. In the help files it notes that you have the option of configuring historical profiles based on a percentage of travel speed versus free flow speed and values will be less than 0. Then it also briefly explains that if you are modelling travel times directly, values can be greater than 1, though it doesn't elaborate.
As our edges have a travel time value measured in seconds, it looks like I don't have to convert everything to a proportion. Just not sure what network analyst will be looking for in terms of a value - if free flow is 100 seconds for example, and 8am is 120 seconds, would that make the value for the profile at 8AM 20 seconds (120-100)? Or will it be looking for 1.2 (120/100)? If it assumes it is getting a proportion, my value of 1.2 would indicate the link is faster than free-flow. Perhaps I should just make my life easier and go with proportions of free-flow.
