Arterial performance measurement using transit buses as probe vehicles

Developing clear, relevant performance measures for arterials is challenging due to complicated traffic control parameters and users with numerous origins and destinations. With increasing data availability from intelligent transportation systems (ITS) deployments, it is increasingly possible to develop and test new arterial performance measures. Important parameters including average speed, travel time and delay can be obtained both directly and indirectly from sources such as automatic vehicle location (AVL) system. In this paper, we demonstrate how AVL data can be used to characterize the performance of an arterial. Two sources of ITS data were used to assess arterial performance on one corridor in Portland, Oregon. First, we extracted data from the bus dispatch system (BDS) of the transit provider for Portland, Oregon. Performance characteristics as described by bus travel on the arterial were then compared with ground truth data collected by probe vehicles equipped with global positioning systems (GPS) sensors traveling with normal traffic on the same arterial on the same days. Comparisons were made between the two methods and conclusions were drawn regarding the utility of the transit AVL data for real-time advanced traffic management and traveler information systems.