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Title:

Estimation of Traffic Flow from Bluetooth Detections

Accession Number:

01631698

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

This paper presents the existence of the correlation between urban traffic counts and detections by Bluetooth devices. Conventional traffic flow counters are often costly, both in monetary terms and in terms of installation and maintenance works. At the same time, there is an additional cost due to the calibration work needed regularly, more often than not. Some of the conventional traffic counters (e.g. pneumatic tubes or inductive loops) are being degraded when used, while others (e.g. video image detection) require back-end processes and resources. The reliability of the majority of the traffic counters significantly depends on weather conditions and congestion levels, often producing low quality of measurements. On the contrary, detectors of Bluetooth devices are low-cost systems for measuring traffic flows. Their functionality is not hindered by weather conditions and their installation is easy to execute, without major impacts on the traffic flow. At the same time, they can be easily moved to alternate locations if required and there is no need for calibration. These systems have the added value of “tracking” cars in the network, providing useful information for origin-destination matrices estimation, route choice behavioral patterns or travel time measurements. The use of Bluetooth devices’ detectors has been tested in Thessaloniki, where 43 units have been installed and traffic flows have been recorded for more than one year. It turns out that the correlation between Bluetooth detections and traffic flow is significant, so as to allow the use of Bluetooth devices’ detections as traffic flow counters.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ35 Standing Committee on Highway Traffic Monitoring.

Monograph Accession #:

01618707

Report/Paper Numbers:

17-04346

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Salanova Grau, Josep Maria
Stamos, Iraklis
Mitsakis, Evangelos
Margaritis, Dimitris
Tzenos, Panagiotis
Aifadopoulou, Georgia

Pagination:

12p

Publication Date:

2017

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Geographic Terms:

Thessaloniki (Greece)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-04346

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 8 2016 11:39AM