TITLE:
Modeling Incident Duration Using Lasso and Ridge Regressions
AUTHORS:
Zhubin Najafi, Hualiang Teng
KEYWORDS:
Incident Duration Prediction, Incident Response Modeling, Incident Management, Machine Learning, Lasso Regression, Ridge Regression
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.16 No.1,
December
8,
2025
ABSTRACT: Traffic incidents significantly disrupt freeway operations, causing delays, congestion, fuel waste, and economic losses. Effective incident management requires not only rapid detection and clearance but also accurate real-time prediction of incident duration, a capability currently lacking in most Traffic Management Centers (TMCs). This study develops machine learning models to predict incident duration based on real-time responses and evolving incident conditions. The analysis uses incident data from the I-15 corridor in Las Vegas, Nevada, encompassing 643 recorded incidents, of which 272 were further documented in a novel Video Snapshots Dataset (VSDS) that captures 15-second visual records of incident characteristics. Key incident attributes, including total and average blockage duration, were extracted to enrich model training. Three predictive approaches were evaluated: Lasso Regression and Ridge Regression with 10-fold cross-validation, with comparison with Multiple Linear Regression. Among these, Ridge Regression achieved the highest predictive accuracy, demonstrating its effectiveness for real-time estimation of incident duration. These findings provide a foundation for enhancing TMC operations by enabling more reliable travel time updates and proactive traffic management strategies.