As urban traffic congestion continues to intensify, predicting short-term traffic flow has become essential to enabling real-time control in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). However, traditional models face significant limitations in capturing the spatiotemporal and nonlinear characteristics of traffic data. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, with their gated mechanisms, can effectively model long-term dependencies and periodic patterns in traffic flow. The accuracy of these predictions directly influences decision-making in scenarios such as traffic guidance and emergency management, offering substantial practical value for improving road network efficiency. This study constructs an optimized LSTM model to evaluate its effectiveness in short-term traffic prediction and to compare predictive performance across different time granularities. A dual-layer LSTM architecture is employed, incorporating the Adam optimizer, Dropout, and early stopping as regularization strategies. Using urban traffic monitoring data from the United States, both hourly and daily prediction models are developed for experimental validation. Results indicate that the hourly prediction model (MSE = 0.0709) markedly surpasses the daily model (MSE = 0.2987), effectively identifying recurring patterns like rush periods in the morning and evening. These outcomes offer a practical solution for adaptive traffic regulation.
Research Article
Open Access