Analysis of the effect of bus stops on the bus speed regarding the usage of public bus fleet as probe vehicles

Abstract

Public bus fleet location data has emerged in the last years as an affordable oppor tunity for local governments to monitor the city traffic. However, the speed data calculated from the location of the public bus fleet tend to be affected by bus stops, Consequently, the inclination on this field is to discard the speed affected by bus stops for traffic monitoring. Several approaches have been developed to identify the bus data affected by bus stops. In this work, the effect on traffic monitoring of bus location data affected by a bus stop is tested through a case study in La Castellana, one of the main arteries of Madrid -the capital city of Spain-, by using data of its public urban transport company, the Empresa Municipal de Transportes (EMT). The analysis of the results concludes that the use of public bus fleet location data affected by bus stops has a bias effect on traffic monitoring. However, it also concludes that this bias effect is mainly caused by the buses dropping or collecting passengers.