Abstract:
Nowadays, Traffic information is important and necessary for planning and solving traffic congestion. Good information comes from useful and reliable traffic data. Tracking of traffic route is useful data, yet difficult to collect from conventional traffic data collection method. This research investigates the use of Bluetooth detector device (BT) to collect traffic data and convert it into vehicle (traffic) tracking on road network. The study employed 40 BT units installed on Bangkok inner city road network and collected data for 2 days. MAC Addresses and times detected of Bluetooth device in network were collected. Data were analyzed by re-identification method. Characteristics of tracked data and continuity of data were examined. Characteristics of missing data were investigated and route estimation when data were missing was introduced. The result of the study shows that data from BT can create a pattern of traffic such as origin-destination, trip characteristic by time of day travel time per trip, route of travel, counts of trip at each area on the network and at each time period of day. It is found that data missing is originally around 40 percent in the study. If route estimation is employed, using possible shortest travel time route finding, then the possibility of route tracking is much improved. The study selected 3 cases (6 specific routes) to study the current route selection behavior and its travel time. The result shows that around half of the current Bangkok travelers chooses the shorter travel-time route, when two alternate routes are compared.