Estimation of Traffic Flow from Bluetooth Detections
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.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ35 Standing Committee on Highway Traffic Monitoring.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
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Authors:
- Salanova Grau, Josep Maria
- Stamos, Iraklis
- Mitsakis, Evangelos
- Margaritis, Dimitris
- Tzenos, Panagiotis
- Aifadopoulou, Georgia
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 12p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Bluetooth technology; Cost effectiveness; Traffic counting; Traffic flow
- Geographic Terms: Thessaloniki (Greece)
- Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01631698
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-04346
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Apr 1 2017 10:45PM