Forecasting Congestion and Enabling Proactive Management on Expressways During Public Holidays: A Survey of Methods, Open Issues, and Research Directions

Expressway travel demand climbs steeply during public holidays, and the severe congestion that follows has become a principal constraint on both network operating efficiency and the quality of travel services. Dependable forecasting of holiday congestion, coupled with the practical realization of proactive management, accordingly carries considerable theoretical and practical weight for improving how expressways are operated and administered and for safeguarding efficient and safe public travel. Organized around the central theme of congestion prediction and proactive management for expressways over holiday periods, this paper reviews the progress of research across five interrelated areas: traffic speed and flow prediction methods; congestion state identification and forecasting; holiday travel characteristic analysis together with demand prediction; multi-source data fusion and congestion propagation mechanisms; and expressway traffic control together with traveler behavior guidance. Having surveyed the theoretical underpinnings, core technologies, and representative methods of each area, the paper concentrates in particular on the shortcomings and difficulties that existing studies encounter in coping with the hallmark features of holiday traffic, namely demand surges of short duration combined with pronounced spatiotemporal heterogeneity, and proceeds to outline promising avenues for subsequent research. Overall, the review seeks to provide wide-ranging literature support and a theoretical reference for developing technologies that predict and proactively manage congestion on expressways during public holidays.