The effect of the aggregation interval on vehicular traffic flow heteroscedasticity is investigated using real-world traffic flow data collected from the motorway system in the United Kingdom. 30 traffic flow series are generated using 30 aggregation intervals ranging from 1 to 30 min at 1 min increment, and autoregressive integrated moving average （AR/MA） models are constructed and applied in these series, generating 30 residual series. Through applying the portmanteau Q-test and the Lagrange multiplier （LM） test in the residual series from the ARIMA models, the heteroscedasticity in traffic flow series is investigated. Empirical results show that traffic flow is heteroscedastJc across these selected aggregation intervals, and longer aggregation intervals tend to cancel out the noise in the traffic flow data and hence reduce the heteroscedasticity in traffic flow series. The above findings can be utilized in the development of reliable and robust traffic management and control systems.
