USE OF BLUETOOTH BASED TRAVEL TIME INFORMATION FOR TRAFFIC OPERATIONS

Michael Wieck Associate Vice President, Transportation Systems Iteris, Inc. 1700 Carnegie Avenue, Suite 100 Santa Ana, CA 82705-5551 +1-303-905-7008 mwieck@iteris.com

ABSTRACT In 2009, the Minnesota Department of Transportation selected an Arterial Travel Time Measurement System using Bluetooth Technology as part of its 2009-2010 ITS Innovative Idea Program. The project deploys 8 Bluetooth readers along CSAH 81 together with a central web based analysis software. One key goal of this project is to demonstrate how the travel time information may be used as a performance measure for arterial traffic management and operations. This paper provides the results of this deployment and draws conclusions for the use of Bluetooth based data collection for arterial traffic operations and performance management.

KEY WORDS Bluetooth based data collection, travel times, traffic signal operations, performance management

INTRODUCTION Accurate measurements of travel time provided in real time and collected for statistical analysis can be very beneficial in the management and operation of an arterial network. As summarized in a recent study in Denver (1), measuring and monitoring arterial travel times can provide: Traffic signal operators with the tools to better monitor their signal systems and the data necessary to make informed and timely operational decisions (e.g., development and selection of optimum timing plans); Planning information to other stakeholders such as City and regional transportation planners, transportation boards or City Councils; Useful traveler information disseminated to the public.

One of the key attributes of Good Performance Measures is that they should be accurate and easy to collect and analyze. This attribute has proved challenging in arterial environments due to the significant variability of traffic flow and speeds, which is caused by the presence of multiple signalized intersections along the arterial, differing distances between signals, signal phasing and timing, side friction from driveways and curb parking, and the fact that
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vehicles can enter and leave the arterial at numerous locations almost at will. A promising approach to collect traffic flow data is to identify and track vehicles using unique signatures while they are traveling on the arterial network. A vehicle may be identified at a point along the arterial at time = T1 - and then again further downstream (at distance D) at time = T2, with T2-T1 representing the travel time for that vehicle along the link of length D. Tracking multiple vehicles as they traverse the link provides an estimate of the average travel time as well as a basis for statistically relevant samples. Whereas several technical solutions have appeared in recent years (using license plate, toll tag and cell phone tracking, as well as the matching of electromagnetic signatures), Bluetooth technology is more and more being used to obtain reliable and accurate travel time information in a cost effective manner. While the majority of deployments to date have been on freeway networks, initial work done (2) shows that despite an increased variance compared with monitoring Interstate traffic, travel time trends can be easily identified on an arterial network. One key area of interest is whether the information gathered on travel times through the use of Bluetooth technology can also be used for traffic signal operations. If this question can be answered positively, City traffic operators will have a new set of relatively inexpensive tools at their disposal to improve their operations. THE PROJECT Eight Bluetooth readers have been installed at 6 intersections along CSAH 81 in Hennepin County, MN. The CSAH 81 corridor is an excellent choice for testing a travel time data collection system. Traffic volumes range from around 10,000 vehicles/day to over 25,000 vehicles/day. The corridor runs through several suburban communities and has signal infrastructure throughout its length. The roadways characteristics change over its length and this provides a vigorous test area for a system studying a variety of different arterial environments. At each intersection, the Bluetooth information is sent back to the central office via 3G wireless communication. At the beginning and end of the corridor, two readers have been installed at those intersections at opposite sites communicating among each other via WiFi, whereas the other intersections are equipped with one reader only at alternate sides. The reason for this layout is to test the sensitivity of the signal reception to distance from the vehicles. At the central office, a web based application stores and processes the data, calculating the travel times between pairs of Bluetooth readers, as well as other information, e.g. the number of times a specific MAC address has been read in the vicinity of one Bluetooth reader, and the number of devices read at one location during a certain interval. The project was operational for several months in 2010 and finished in March 2011. The central software did collect data and processed the resulting information, and a Final Report has been delivered.

Figure1:CorridorLayout

ANALYSIS Key parameters that can be used for performance measurements are: Location Specific Measurements Number of measurements (counts) of unique devices Number of measurements (counts) of individual devices

Location specific measurements provide information on the number of vehicles that are being detected at a specific location, but also on how long those vehicles are within detection range of the Bluetooth reader i.e. at or close to the intersection. This latter information can be used to assess the performance of the intersection comparing this with cycle times etc. can help identify the development of bottlenecks and be used to develop trending information. Travel Times Travel Times between two locations Number of devices scanned at both locations

Travel time information between two locations can be used to analyze trends, and to identify changes in traffic patterns. Of particular relevance is the fact that a vehicle is typically detected several times at one location. This allows to compare travel times from the first time a vehicle has been detected at the first intersection to the last time it has been detected at the second one (which effectively includes the time traversing the intersections) with the travel time between the last time the vehicle was detected at the first intersection and the first time it was detected at the second one (effectively measuring the travel time between intersections). (First-First and Last-Last measurements also are possible and effectively add the time traversing one intersection to the travel time between the intersections).
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The remainder of this paper provides a description of the process used in collecting and evaluating the data, and the data analysis of the data collected in the second half of 2010, as well as an assessment of the benefits of this information for traffic signal operations and planning agencies.

BLUETOOTH SYSTEM DATA COLLECTION AND EVALUATION PROCESS The process used for collecting system data and evaluating the performance of the Arterial Bluetooth Travel Time Monitoring System along CSAH 81 consisted of the following tasks: Review of existing traffic information along CSAH 81 provided by Hennepin County. Collection of traffic data, including volume and travel times along the CSAH 81 corridor, prior to system deployment and during system deployment, in order to compare manually collected data against data collected from Bluetooth devices traveling through the CSAH 81 corridor. Collection of device data, including individual MAC addresses from known Bluetooth devices traveling along the CSAH 81 corridors, as well as time-stamped information on the first and the last time a particular device was detected within the range of one Bluetooth receiver. Analysis of compared data in a number of ways, including average speed, number of Bluetooth matches, standard deviation and percentage of speed differential between the two sets of data. Other anomalies related to corridor conditions (i.e. construction along the corridor, traffic incidents, etc.) were also noted as they occurred.

Reviewing travel time summaries indicated this corridor experiences a relatively large difference in travel time. This can be attributed to the nature of this arterial, the daily fluctuations in mainline and side street demand or mid block driveways along a segment of the corridor, which can have substantial impact on the travel time within the corridor. As an initial step, Bluetooth devices with known MAC addresses were successfully tracked along the corridor, verifying the accuracy of using the underlying technology. The central office software provided for data filtering and smoothing: the filtering allowed to select travel times below a user definable max time (between 1 and 360 minutes), and to eliminate the last 5% of travel times within a distribution of the frequency of occurrence of a particular travel time to eliminate outliers. Data smoothing was performed by modifying the average time interval within which data is averaged, between 1 and 30 minutes.

RESULTS It is important that the data collected is of a sufficient sample size to represent the conditions to a desired degree of accuracy. Using standard statistical analysis techniques, the sample size can be calculated from the following parameters: confidence level desired, margin of error, and population size. Assuming a 95% confidence level with a 5 % margin of error, and using the volume (~18,000 vehicles) identified from tube counts between 6:30 AM and 6:30 PM on a single day, a sample size of 375 hits or matches would be necessary. A majority of the segments exceed this sample size, a few segments are slightly below but are well within a 90% confidence of 267 samples.
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Average Travel Times The following tables show average calculated travel times for October 2010.
NorthboundAMPeakPeriodTravelTimes OctoberTravelTimes From To 36thAve. 42ndAve. 42ndAve. BassLake BassLake 63rdAve. 63rdAve. 71stAve. 71stAve. Greenhaven TravelTime(sec) 121.8 194.3 89.8 117.6 132.1 AverageSpeed(mph) 33.0 35.6 49.1 36.6 40.6 No.ofBluetooth Matches 72 22 69 100 117 StandardDeviation 8.85 6.50 11.18 10.53 12.09

From To 36thAve. 42ndAve. 42ndAve. BassLake BassLake 63rdAve. 63rdAve. 71stAve. 71stAve. Greenhaven

NorthboundOffPeakPeriodTravelTimes OctoberTravelTimes No.ofBluetooth TravelTime(sec) AverageSpeed(mph) Matches 120.3 32.3 326 211.9 35.0 132 91.8 49.0 257 106.7 40.7 313 138.6 40.0 321

StandardDeviation 7.96 8.19 12.37 10.84 12.93

From To 36thAve. 42ndAve. 42ndAve. BassLake BassLake 63rdAve. 63rdAve. 71stAve. 71stAve. Greenhaven

NorthboundPMPeakPeriodTravelTimes OctoberTravelTimes No.ofBluetooth TravelTime(sec) AverageSpeed(mph) Matches 122.5 32.6 245 224.3 32.7 164 98.9 45.1 434 110.0 39.1 285 129.7 42.4 232

StandardDeviation 8.19 7.92 12.67 10.98 12.67

TABLE1:TRAVELTIMEDATANORTHBOUND

SouthboundAMPeakPeriodTravelTimes OctoberTravelTimes From To Greenhaven 71stAve. 71stAve. 63rdAve. 63rdAve. BassLakeRd. BassLakeRd. 42ndAve. 42ndAve. 36thAve. TravelTime AverageSpeed No.ofBluetooth Standard (sec) (mph) Matches Deviation 128.7 40.0 173 10.08 89.7 48.1 147 10.17 80.3 53.0 116 9.49 239.4 33.3 51 10.27 103.7 37.5 96 8.25

SouthboundOffPeakPeriodTravelTimes OctoberTravelTimes From To Greenhaven 71stAve. 71stAve. 63rdAve. 63rdAve. BassLakeRd. BassLakeRd. 42ndAve. 42ndAve. 36thAve. TravelTime AverageSpeed No.ofBluetooth Standard (sec) (mph) Matches Deviation 139.6 38.2 327 10.77 89.9 46.9 274 10.17 80.5 53.3 235 9.80 239.4 33.1 137 10.04 118.2 33.9 273 8.81

SouthboundPMPeakPeriodTravelTimes OctoberTravelTimes TravelTime AverageSpeed No.ofBluetooth Standard (sec) (mph) Matches Deviation From To Greenhaven 71stAve. 161.9 34.3 179 12.33 71stAve. 63rdAve. 94.3 45.6 211 10.94 63rdAve. BassLakeRd. 83.9 51.6 247 10.21 BassLakeRd. 42ndAve. 207.4 34.3 126 7.29 42ndAve. 36thAve. 129.7 33.4 177 10.43

TABLE2:TRAVELTIMEDATASOUTHBOUND

Verification of Results Manual travel time runs were compared with the calculated travel times using Bluetooth MAC address matches. The following table shows the results of the comparison. The calculated differences were relatively small. Larger differences can be associated with the position of the Bluetooth reader relative to the center of the intersection which was used to mark each segment for the field measurements. In theory, the field vehicle could be stopped and measured by the Bluetooth and not have reached the center of the intersection. This could potentially account for different travel times for the field measurements. Also, the travel patterns of the travel time runs and the average travel patterns of the overall set of measured vehicles could be different, due to platoon and other effects.

LastSeenat LastSeenat Greenhaven 36thAve. Ave. 6:53:07AM 7:05:58AM 7:27:53AM 7:38:02AM 8:01:21AM 8:12:57AM 8:47:07AM 8:58:31AM 9:17:01AM 9:28:21AM 9:47:11AM 9:58:09AM 10:18:08AM 10:28:04AM 10:46:19AM 10:58:08AM 11:25:12AM 11:37:25AM 11:54:27AM 12:05:53PM 1:04:44PM 1:16:19PM 1:51:01PM 1:36:45PM 2:10:48PM 2:23:37PM 2:43:35PM 2:54:07PM 3:15:54PM 3:27:38PM 3:48:30PM 3:59:42PM 4:20:22PM 4:33:44PM 4:51:17PM 5:06:10PM 5:24:09PM 5:38:08PM 5:58:53PM 6:11:34PM

October13thTravelTimeComparison TotalTravelTime (Bluetooth CollectedTravel measurement) Times 771 726 609 630 694 743 684 750 680 706 658 602 596 700 709 677 733 764 686 698 695 791 856 892 769 778 632 666 704 777 672 728 802 787 893 945 839 851 761 785

Difference(Sec.) 45 21 49 66 26 56 104 32 31 12 96 36 9 34 73 56 15 52 12 24

TABLE3:TRAVELTIMECOMPARISON

Trend Analysis One analysis focused on identifying traffic flow trends. An opportunity arose due to construction taking place on the corridor beginning August 10, 2010. The following graph summarizes average travel time for AM, OFF, and PM peak periods for the typical travel days (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) for the week in advance, the first week of construction and the second week of construction along the segment of 63rd Street and Bass Lake Road. Temporary traffic control started August 10, 2010; as shown the remainder of the week, all periods experienced increased travel times. Travel times started to balance in the second week as travelers adjusted to the traffic control or potentially moved to alternate routes, but it still remained higher than preconstruction travel times.

Figure 3: Travel Times during Construction Period

OUTLOOK

The project has provided Mn/DOT and Hennepin County with a large volume of data, which, once synthesized and analyzed, could be of value for a number of traffic operations and transportation system planning purposes. Based on the data that was collected during this project, Hennepin County Public Works staff identified a number of ways in which the data could be used, as follows: Public travel time information purposes The County could provide pretrip travel times on specific routes, route delays or other traveler information as determined appropriate by the County. Assist in the prioritization of signal timing projects Of particular interest to Hennepin County is assistance in determining how often and when to retime arterial corridor traffic signals. Presently the County reviews approximately one third of its signalized corridors each year and prioritizes signal retiming activities based on needs and available budget. One enhancement that could be made to the system in this regard would be in the automation of the system in terms of notifying the agency when certain thresholds have been met along a corridor based on collected travel time/speed information. Post-construction review of corridor travel speeds Transportation system planning As part of this project, tube counts were compiled to confirm ADT and verify speeds while Bluetooth equipment was in use. Using data gathered by the Bluetooth readers could either reduce the need for other data collection activities required by County staff,
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or augment those efforts and streamline data collection processes, currently in place. Integration with regional/county traveler information systems Data collected by the system would have to be automated and streamed into the Regional Traffic Management Center (RTMC) in Roseville and/or Hennepin Countys Public Works Facility in Medina Performance Measurement Potential performance measures could include: - The affects of a widening project along an arterial could be monitored - The placement and use of changeable message boards to move traffic from a congested arterial could be evaluated with before and after travel time information

REFERENCES

(1)PerformanceMeasuresforTrafficSignalOperations,FinalReport,DenverRegional CouncilofGovernments,November2008. (2)RealTimeTravelTimeEstimatesUsingMACAddressMatching,J.S.Wasson,J.R. Sturdevant,D.M.Bullock,ITEJournalVol.78No.6,June2008.