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      "content": "The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) has made available several years' worth of historical travel time data for Sydney's M4 freeway. The data are collected from loops on the road at three minute intervals.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The file is formated as follows<br />                         40010    40015    40020    …<br />1/03/10 15:01    804        209       804      248<br />1/03/10 15:04    892        212       801      237<br />1/03/10 15:07    857        214       821      243<br />…                       849        222       834      252<br /><br />The header row shows the route IDs and the first column has timestamps. The cells show the travel time in deciseconds.<br /><br />Route IDs are ordered sequentially. Routes 40010-40150 are westbound travel times and 41010-41160 are eastbound travel times. See m4-map.pdf for an approximate guide to the freeway's layout. <br /><br />RTAData.csv holds the travel time dataset. Complete data is provided from March 2010 to July 2010. For the data from August 2010 to mid-November 2010, the letter \"x\" appears whenever a prediction is required. <br /><br />29 cut-off times have been selected. After those cut-off times, predictions must be made for the next 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 90 minutes, 2 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 18 hours and 24 hours. To prevent particicipants from meaningfully using the future to predict the present, data are not revealved again until 18 hours after the last forecast has been made (or 42 hours after the cut-off point). <br /><br />Participants are required to provide 290 forecasts (10 for each cut-off point) for the 61 routes. The route IDs should appear in a header row, and the timestamps in the first column. The file sampleEntry.csv is an example entry, showing how entries should be formatted. <br /><br />The RTA has also provided some additional historical data, RTAHistorical.csv (collected using their old system), which covers November 2008 to February 2010. The data are consistent with the newer RTA data except that:<br />- they don't cover weekends; and<br />- there are no data for routes 40092 and 41140.<br /><br /><b>Update 17 December: </b>The file RTAError.csv shows where loop readings are suspected to be inaccurate. Loop readings can be inaccurate because the loop is behaving erratically or because the loop is not responding at all (in which case the average travel time  from adjacent loop combinations have been used). <br /><br />The file RTAError.csv shows the proportion of loops in a route that have failed (a route is made up of many loops).  A reading of 0 means that all loops are functioning properly, a reading of 0.5 means that 50 per cent of the loops are functioning and a reading of 1 means that no loops are functioning. <br /><br />The file RouteLengthApprox.csv shows approximate route lengths. It is calculated as the number of loops in the route multiplied by 500m (the  approximate distance between loops). <br mce_bogus=\"1\" />",
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      "name": "Description",
      "content": "Forecasting travel times helps improve road safety and efficiency. Accurate predictions help commuters make informed decisions about when to travel and on what routes. This helps to lower intensity on problem arterials by encouraging motorists to use underutilised parts of the grid, and where possible, by having them select alternative times and modes of travel.  <br /><br />This competition requires participants to predict travel time on Sydney's M4 freeway from past travel time observations. In addition to better informing network managers and Australian motorists, insights from the competition will improve the general efficiency of the road transport system in Sydney and increase functionality on the government's <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"NSW RTA live traffic site\" mce_href=\"http://livetraffic.rta.nsw.gov.au/\" href=\"http://livetraffic.rta.nsw.gov.au/\">live traffic website</a>.  <br /><br />Participants in this competition are required to forecast the travel time on the M4 freeway for 15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, one hour, 90mins, two hours, six hours, 12 hours, 18 hours and 24 hours ahead. The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority has made 2 years' worth of historical data on road use between 2008 and 2010  available for this competition.  <br /><br />$10,000 is being offered for the winning model.<br /><br />The competition is being hosted by Australia's NSW Roads and Traffic Authority and is being sponsored by the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet.<br /><br /><img alt=\"Map of the M4 freeway\" src=\"@Url.Image('m4-map-small.png')\" width=\"640\" height=\"286\" /><br mce_bogus=\"1\" />",
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    {
      "name": "Rules",
      "content": "\r\n\t<!-- Begin Base Rules -->\r\n    <h3>One account per participant</h3>\r\n    <p>You cannot sign up to Kaggle from multiple accounts and therefore you cannot submit from multiple accounts.</p>\r\n    <h3>No private sharing outside teams</h3>\r\n    <p>\r\n        Privately sharing code or data outside of teams is not permitted.\r\n        It's okay to share code if made available to all participants on the forums.\r\n    </p>\r\n    <h3>Team Mergers</h3>\r\n    <p>\r\n        Team mergers are allowed and can be performed by the team leader. In order to merge, the combined team must have a total submission count less than or equal to the maximum allowed as of the merge date. The maximum allowed is the number of submissions per day multiplied by the number of days the competition has been running.<br/>\r\n    </p>\r\n\r\n    <h3>Team Limits</h3>\r\n    <p>There is no maximum team size.</p>\r\n    <h3>Submission Limits</h3>\r\n    <p>You may submit a maximum of 2 entries per day.</p>\r\n    <p>You may select up to 5 final submissions for judging.</p>\r\n    <h3>Competition Timeline</h3>\r\n    <p>Start Date: <strong>11/23/2010 12:00 AM UTC</strong></p>\r\n    <p>Merger Deadline: <strong>None</strong></p>\r\n    <p>Entry Deadline: <strong>None</strong></p>\r\n    <p>End Date: <strong>2/13/2011 10:00 PM UTC</strong></p>\r\n\t<!-- End Base Rules -->\r\nParticipants are allowed to make two submissions per day. Towards the end of the competition, teams will have the opportunity to \r\nnominate five entries that count towards the final standings. It is the best of these five entries that dictates a team's final score. A team's last five entries will be \r\nchosen by default if they don't nominate any entries.<br /><br />Entries will be evaluated using the root mean squared error across all routes and horizons. <br /><br />The winning entry has to be a general algorithm that can be implemented by the RTA. That means that it takes a timestamp as an input and can generate predictions for the next 15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 60 mins etc. Results must also be replicated by the RTA before any prize money is awarded.<br />",
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