AI for Motorized Travel Time Index Prediction: Enhancing Spatio-Temporal Urban Mobility Performance in Smart Cities

Smart city initiatives highlight the vital role of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which remain underexplored with limited AI-driven solutions integration in real-time urban traffic management across African cities. ITS is crucial to enhance urban mobility efficiency and sustainability to address growing mobility challenges in the era of swift African urbanization. This paper proposes an AI-driven predictive model for the Travel Time Index (TTI), a key metric quantifying urban traffic congestion and mobility performance. Using spatio-temporal analysis, neural networks, and advanced machine learning algorithms, the model processes real-time, multimodal traffic data, capturing congestion patterns, TTI fluctuations, and complex urban travel dynamics, focusing on Casablanca, Morocco, as a smart city case study. Five predictive modeling approaches were carefully selected and rigorously evaluated: Multivariate Linear Regression (MLR), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting, Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), and Support Vector Regression (SVR). Their performance was assessed using standard evaluation metrics: Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and R-squared (R2). All models achieved high accuracy, with Random Forest ranking highest (MAE = 0.315, R2 = 0.985). Beyond prediction, the methodology incorporates feature importance analysis and hyperparameter tuning via GridSearchCV to improve operational performance and practical applicability across evolving traffic ecosystems. Hyperparameter optimization further enhanced Random Forest’s accuracy (MAE = 0.220, R2 = 0.988). The findings demonstrate improved travel time estimation and congestion management capabilities, offering a scalable, adaptable framework to guide data-driven mobility strategies in diverse urban settings and provide actionable insights for urban planners, policymakers, and mobility stakeholders.