Annual average daily traffic

Annual average daily traffic, abbreviated AADT, is a measure used primarily in transportation planning and transportation engineering. Traditionally, it is the total volume of vehicle traffic of a highway or road for a year divided by 365 days. AADT is a useful and simple measurement of how busy the road is. Newer advances from traffic data providers are now providing AADT by side of the road, by day of week and by time of day.

Uses

One of the most important uses of AADT is for determining funding for the maintenance and improvement of Highways.

In the United States the amount of federal funding a state will receive is related to the total traffic measured across its Highway network. Each year on June 15, every state in the United States submits a Highway Performance Monitoring System HPMS report. The HPMS report contains various information regarding the road segments in the state based on a sample (not all of the road segments) of the road segments. In the report, the AADT is converted to Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). VMT is the AADT multiplied by the length of the road segment. To determine the amount of traffic a state has, the AADT cannot be summed for all road segments since an AADT is a rate. The VMT is summed and is used as an indicator of the amount of traffic a state has. For federal-funding, formulas are applied to include the VMT and other highway statistics.