Transportation trend of Chinese expressway

The historical data of traffic volume, vehicle structure, vehicle speed, traffic density, empty driving and truck overload of Chinese expressway in 13 years were mined, and the transportation situations of passenger vehicle and freight vehicle on expressway were analyzed. Analysis result shows that the expressway vehicle driving capacity in 2018 was 7.32×10¹¹ veh·km, in which the truck driving capacity was 2.21×10¹¹ veh·km and the bus driving capacity was 5.11×10¹¹ veh·km. The correlation coefficient of expressway vehicle driving capacity and lane mileage was as high as 0.99. In 2018, the passenger turnover volume of expressway was 1.77×10¹² people·km, which was three times the value of in 2006 and 1.25 times of railway passenger turnover volume in the same year, respectively. With an increasing number of private car ownership, the total number and proportion of passenger vehicle trips with less than 7 seats increased substantially and continually, from 29.75% of the total passenger turnover of expressway in 2006 to 71.74% in 2018. The freight turnover volume of expressway was 2.99×10¹² t·km in 2018, with a year-on-year growth of about 4.25% compared with 2017. The expressway freight turnover volume accounted for 42.00% of the total commercial truck turnover volume in whole society, and its fluctuation basically synchronized with the economic cycle. The passenger and truck transportation of expressway in each province were relatively reasonable. The Gini coefficients of passenger and freight transportation density in each province were 0.36 and 0.30 in 2018, respectively, both within the relatively reasonable range. With a further optimization of expressway freight vehicle structure, the excess freight decreased 1.63% and the empty-truck increased 4.28% in 2018 compared with 2017.