Seattle Freeway Traffic Speed Data from Inductive Loop Detectors

The Freeway Inductive Loop Detector Dataset contains spatiotemporal speed information from freeways in the Seattle area, including I-5, I-405, I-90, and SR-520. Data from the Washington State Department of Transportation was processed by the University of Washington's STAR Lab, which applied quality control and imputation procedures. The processed data is aggregated into 5-minute intervals and averaged by milepost and direction.

Use Cases

• Network-wide traffic speed prediction based on spatiotemporal speed matrices.
• Evaluating deep learning models like LSTMs and graph neural networks for transportation forecasting.
• Analyzing traffic patterns and congestion on specific Seattle-area freeway corridors.

Strengths

• Data has undergone quality control and imputation procedures as described in referenced academic papers.
• Speed data is aggregated from multiple detectors and integrated into a consistent 5-minute interval format.
• The dataset is associated with peer-reviewed research and has been used in multiple published studies.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total temporal coverage are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), processed by the STAR Lab at the University of Washington.

Collection Method

Collected by inductive loop detectors deployed on freeways, averaged by milepost and direction, and integrated into 5-minute intervals.

Geography

Freeways in the Seattle area, specifically I-5, I-405, I-90, and SR-520.