A PRESCRIPTION FOR TRANSIT ARRIVAL/DEPARTURE PREDICTION USING AUTOMATIC VEHICLE LOCATION DATA

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2003

Subject Area

infrastructure - vehicle, planning - route design, planning - signage/information, mode - bus, mode - mass transit

Keywords

Vehicle locating systems, Transit, Seattle (Washington), Schedules, Routes, Public transit, Portland (Oregon), Mathematical prediction, Mass transit, Local transit, Kalman filtering, Detection and identification system applications, Bus transit operations, AVL, Automatic vehicle location, Automatic location systems, ATIS, Arrivals and departures, Algorithms, Advanced traveler information systems

Abstract

This paper presents a data flow approach to predict transit vehicle arrival/departure. The prescriptive approach breaks the prediction tasks into several component parts. Three components are identified (a tracker, a filter and a predictor), that are necessary to use automatic vehicle location (AVL) data to position a vehicle in space and time and then predict the arrival/departure at a selected location. Data, starting as an AVL stream, flows through the three components, each component transforms the data, and the end result is a prediction of arrival/departure. This prescription provides a framework that can be used to describe the steps in any prediction scheme. The authors describe a Kalman filter for the filter component, and present two examples of algorithms that are implemented in the predictor component. AVL data from Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, are used to create examples of transit vehicle prediction systems. The examples demonstrate that there is a significant gain in information for passengers using the AVL data with an implementation of this prescription. Results also show that the overall prescription can be useful in a transit setting that has a fleet of transit vehicles, each equipped with a transmitter, that travels along prescribed routes, and that has a transit database that defines the schedule times and the geographical layout of every route.

Comments

Transportation Research Part C Home Page: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0968090X

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS