The invention discloses a convolutional neural network structure-based traffic flow prediction method. The method comprises the following steps of 1) establishing a traffic flow data set and preprocessing the data set: establishing the traffic flow data set according to obtained traffic flow data, preprocessing the data set, constructing a data set sample matrix, and dividing the data set into a training set and a test set; 2) establishing a single-layer conventional convolutional neural network, removing a pooling layer, constructing a feature extraction network of a road traffic flow matrix,adding a sigmoid nonlinear regression layer to a full connection layer, and constructing a road traffic flow nonlinear regression prediction network; and 3) training the convolutional neural networkand realizing real-time prediction of short-term traffic flow: defining a model objective function, taking the training set as an input of a convolutional neural network model, solving an optimal parameter of the model to finish model training, and performing real-time traffic flow prediction on the test set by utilizing the trained convolutional neural network model. The short-term prediction accuracy of the traffic flow is improved.