Review of Automatic Passenger Counting Systems in Public Urban Transport

Abstract

This paper gives an overview and analysis of the most frequently used methods and technologies as well as their designs, with which the passengers are counted on board public urban transport vehicles. It is well-known that the use of sensor technology provides added value to the already existing system, and the offered overview of various automatic passenger counting systems in public urban transport tends to show how much certain designs, methods and technologies contribute to this. Furthermore, a review has been made of the characteristics of certain technologies based on the available relevant studies in which various measurements were done regarding the accuracy, that is, precision of certain designs. The information such as the vehicle occupancy by the number of passengers, movement of passengers at stops of public urban passenger transport (PPT) and occupancy on certain transport lines that can be achieved by using the automatic passenger counting (APC) system. The paper presents the APC system distribution, which is divided in the first step into integrated systems, where direct interaction is performed with the passengers, and independent systems or independent passenger counting, where there is no direct interaction with the passengers. The application of one or several passenger counting methods would enable more systematic management of public urban transport (PUT), thus contributing to the optimization of the transport system on the whole.