01518160

Component

In our performance measure based society, travel time information is critical for the efficient operation of a transportation system, providing baseline operational information as well as feedback after infrastructure and / or ITS changes are implemented. In the last six years, generation of travel time through the use of Bluetooth MAC address tracking has become a relatively low cost acceptable surrogate for more expensive traditional methods of travel time generation, such as floating car studies or license plate matching. While studies over multiple modes have validated this technology, MAC address tracking is not a panacea for all situations and the limitations of the technology must be considered prior to embarking on a deployment. The objective of this paper is to provide practical guidance to practitioners considering such a deployment, and will do so in three steps. First, a brief literature review is conducted with a focus on items that would be of interest to a practitioner investigating a possible Bluetooth deployment. Second, a case study is presented of a vehicular Bluetooth travel time analysis deployment which was hampered by data insufficiency and software usability; specific focus is given to the data analysis conducted with commercially provided hardware and software. Finally, the paper concludes with a section describing the lessons learned from the case study, with the goal of providing guidance to those considering their own Bluetooth applications.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB15 Intelligent Transportation Systems.

01503729

14-2727

English

19p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Bluetooth technology; Case studies; Data analysis; State of the practice; Travel time

Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-2727

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 2:56PM