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This paper explores the travel time distribution of different types of urban roads, the link and path average travel time, and variance estimation methods by analyzing the large-scale travel time dataset detected fromautomatic number plate readers installed throughout Beijing. The results show that the best-fitting travel time distribution for different road links in 15 min time intervals differs for different traffic congestion levels. The average travel time for all links on all days can be estimated with acceptable precision by using normal distribution. However, this distribution is not suitable to estimate travel time variance under some types of traffic conditions. Path travel time can be estimated with high precision by summing the travel time of the links that constitute the path. In addition, the path travel time variance can be estimated by the travel time variance of the links, provided that the travel times on all the links along a given path are generated by statistically independent distributions. These findings can be used to develop and validate microscopic simulations or online travel time estimation and prediction systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]