Abstract
Travel time estimation is an integral part of Intelligent Transportation Systems, and has been an important component in traffic management and operations for many years. Travel time, being spatial in nature, requires spatial sensors to measure it accurately. Bluetooth is emerging as a promising technology for the direct measurement of travel time, and is reported in a few studies from homogenous traffic conditions. At the same time, there have been no studies on the applicability of Bluetooth for travel time estimation in heterogeneous traffic seen in Istanbul and even that Turkey. Bluetooth data collected from a busy urban road in Istanbul city have been analyzed and the penetration rate was found to be about 5 %. Two wheelers and light motor vehicles have been detected using the Bluetooth sensor and the data have been extrapolated to estimate travel times of other classes of vehicles. The study developed linear relationships between speeds of different classes of vehicles through weighted linear regression methods and were used for the estimation of stream travel time. The results obtained were promising and show that Bluetooth is a cost-effective technology for estimation of travel time for heterogeneous traffic conditions.
Highlights
The time taken to commute between two points in a traffic stream—the ‘‘travel time’’—is useful information that can help the traveler plan their trip better
Automatic vehicle identification (AVI), License Plate Recognition Systems, Signature Matching Systems, Platoon Identification Systems, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), mobile phones, and Bluetooth are some common examples of devices that can be used as spatial sensors for travel stream analyses
4.3 Estimation of stream travel time. It can be seen from penetration rate analysis and class identification studies that the Bluetooth has an average penetration rate of 5 % in Turkey conditions, and captures mainly 2W and Light motor vehicles (LMV), which are grouped as High Speed Vehicles (HSV) in this study
Summary
The time taken to commute between two points in a traffic stream—the ‘‘travel time’’—is useful information that can help the traveler plan their trip better. The present study attempts to overcome this stalemate by evaluating the applicability of the Bluetooth sensor as a traffic data source under The Bogazici Bosporus traffic conditions. It is important to understand the percentage of vehicles from which data can be collected using this method, namely penetration rate analysis. It is important to know the class-wise distribution of vehicles from which data can be collected. This is important for a country like Turkey, whose roads are characterized by heterogeneous traffic conditions—two (bicycles, motorbikes), three (auto rickshaws), and four wheelers (cars) share the road with light and heavy motor vehicles and a heavy pedestrian population. This study performs penetration analysis and determines the class-wise distribution of Bluetooth-based data. A method for the estimation of stream travel time from the sampled data is developed
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
