Evaluating the Accuracy of Bluetooth-Based Travel Time on Arterial Roads: A Case Study of Perth, Western Australia

Abstract

Bluetooth (BT) time-stamped media access control (MAC) address data have been used for traffic studies worldwide. Although Bluetooth (BT) technology has been widely recognised as an effective, low-cost traffic data source in freeway traffic contexts, it is still unclear whether BT technology can provide accurate travel time (TT) information in complex urban traffic environments. erefore, this empirical study aims to systematically evaluate the accuracy of BT travel time estimates in urban arterial contexts. ere are two major hurdles to deriving accurate TT information for arterial roads: the multiple detection problem and noise in BT estimates. To date, they have not been fully investigated, nor have well-accepted solutions been found. Using approximately two million records of BT time-stamped MAC address data from twenty weekdays, this study uses five different BT TT-matching methods to investigate and quantify the impact of multiple detection problems and the noise in BT TT estimates on the accuracy of average BT travel times. Our work shows that accurate Bluetooth-based travel time information on signalised arterial roads can be derived if an appropriate matching method can be selected to smooth out the remaining noise in the filtered travel time estimates. Overall, average-to-average and last-to-last matching methods are best for long (>1 km) and short (≤1 km) signalised arterial road segments, respectively. Furthermore, our results show that the differences between BT and ground truth average TTs or speeds are systematic, and adding a calibration is a pragmatic method to correct inaccurate BT average TTs or speeds. e results of this research can help researchers and road operators to better understand BT technology for TT analysis and consequently to optimise the deployment location and configuration of BT MAC address scanners.

Bluetooth Verisi Kullanarak Kentsel Arterlerde Seyahat Süresinin Değerlendirilmesi

“…BT-based traffic data has been frequently used in traffic analysis due to the higher sampling rate and low cost [12]. While some studies focused on the reliability of travel times for freeways or urban arterials [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], some other studies focused on the estimation of origindestination matrix [2,[13][14][15], freeway performance evaluation [10,[16][17], traffic safety analysis [18], delay estimation for signalized intersections [19][20][21]. Since the focus of this study is to examine the reliability of TT data, it is useful to present the TT related studies in this section.…”

“…TT distribution obtained from BT was found significantly different from the 6th edition of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM-6). Liu et al [7], focused on the accuracy of TTs for an urban arterial located in Perth, Wesern Australia. The results showed promising estimations if the filtering process can be implemented to BT data to eliminate the outliers.…”

“…As for literature on the Bluetooth-based studies, the accuracy or variability of the travel times has been investigated particularly for freeways or multilane highways [3][4][5][6][7], whereas there were limited studies regarding the travel time reliability for urban arterials controlled with traffic signals [8][9][10] which is the main focus of this study. For this purpose, BT-based travel time data was collected for two days (October 8-9, 2019) during morning peak hours (07:30-09:30) from five consecutive intersections located on major urban arterials in Mersin, Turkey.…”

Analysis of the Possibility to Detect Road Vehicles via Bluetooth Technology

“…Probe vehicles were also used in [4,12] along with video images that were recorded during the Bluetooth data collection, and it was found that the Bluetooth system was able to report slightly higher travel times, but with results close to those of the ground truth method. In [21], crowdsourced GPS data from the TomTom company was used as ground truth to evaluate the accuracy of Bluetooth average travel time, and the results showed that the differences were systematic and that performing a calibration could be a solution for correcting inaccurate travel times. Data from another private sector supplier, HERE, was used in [22], with the author demonstrating that Bluetooth data has better accuracy and reliability.…”

Trauma Experiences of African Men from a Refugee Background in Western Australia: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…This study was carried out in Perth, WA, a city with a population of over two million [42]. In 2017, there were approximately 6,538 African refugees in Western Australia, of which approximately 3,324 were African men from the countries of interest [43], the majority of whom lived in Perth.…”