Online Stochastic Routing Incorporating Real-Time Traffic Information

Common bus route navigation system provides distance and transferring information based on the user-determined start point and end point on the map. This paper presents the research and experiment of an advanced bus route navigation system in Beijing, which can additionally provide travel time information from start to end. The travel time is predicted based on statistical and real-time traffic information. In Beijing, about 10000 taxies send GPS data to a traffic information center to generate real-time traffic data, and the center accumulates the historical traffic data for generating statistical database. Field test of our system was carried out in January 2007, and the experiment result shows the real-time and statistical traffic information can be used not only for car navigation system, but also for public transit service. In our experiment, the average error rate of predicted travel time is about 10%, which is comparable to car navigation system.

Day-To-Day Route Choice Decision Simulation Based on Dynamic Feedback Information

Nearest neighbor (NN) searches represent an important class of queries in geographic information systems (GIS). Most nearest neighbor algorithms rely on static distance information to compute NN queries (e.g., Euclidean distance or spatial network distance). However, the final goal of a user when performing an NN search is often to travel to one of the points of the search result. In this case, finding the nearest neighbors in terms of travel time is more important than the actual distance. In the existing NN algorithms dynamic real-time events (e.g., traffic congestions, detours, etc.) are usually not considered and hence the pre-computed nearest neighbor objects may not accurately reflect the shortest travel time. In this paper we propose a novel travel time network that integrates both spatial networks and real-time traffic event information. Based on this foundation of the travel time network, we develop a local-based greedy nearest neighbor algorithm and a global-based adaptive nearest neighbor algorithm that both utilize real-time traffic information to provide adaptive nearest neighbor search results. We have performed a theoretical analysis and simulations to verify our methods. The results indicate that our algorithms remarkably reduce the travel time compared with previous nearest neighbor solutions.

There is increasing demand for short-term urban link travel time prediction to build an advanced intelligent transportation system (ITS). With the development of data collection technology, probe data are receiving more attention but the penetration rate of probe vehicles capable of sending probe data is still limited. Most research pertaining to short-term travel time prediction tends to aggregate probe data to obtain useful samples when the penetration rate is low. However, as a result, the prediction can only provide a general description of the travel time and changes in travel time during a short time interval are neglected. To overcome this limitation, a non-parametric model using disaggregate probe data based on dynamic time warping (DTW) was developed in this study. Data from the crossing direction are introduced to separate the data into different signal phases instead of identifying the exact signal pattern. A classical k-nearest neighbor (KNN) model and a naïve model were compared with the proposed model. The models were tested in three scenarios: a computer simulation and two real cases from Nagoya, Japan. The results showed that the proposed model outperforms the other two models under different data penetration rates because it can reflect changes in travel time during a traffic signal cycle. Moreover, the proposed model has wider applicability than the KNN model because it is free from the equal time interval constraint.

This paper has three major contributions. First, a vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET)-based A* (VBA*) route planning algorithm is proposed to calculate the route with the shortest travelling time or the least oil consumption, depending on two real-time traffic information sources. The first one is the recorded traffic information of the road segment that the vehicle has passed through. This traffic information is further exchanged between vehicles when they enter the transmission range of IEEE 802.11p wireless link in the VANET. The second one is the traffic information provided by Google Maps. Then, a GPS navigation app is implemented on the Android platform to realize the VBA* route planning algorithm. Finally, simulations for six route planning algorithms are executed by the well-known VANET simulator, i.e., The ONE. In summary, VBA* achieves significant reductions on both the average travelling time and oil consumption of the planned route, as compared to traditional route planning algorithms.

Adaptive route choice models are studied that explicitly capture travelers’ route choice adjustments according to information on realized network conditions in stochastic time-dependent networks. Two types of adaptive route choice models are explored: an adaptive path model in which a sequence of path choice models are applied at intermediate decision nodes and a routing policy choice model in which the alternatives correspond to routing policies rather than paths at the origin. A routing policy in this study is a decision rule that maps from all possible pairs (e.g., node, time) to the next links out of the node. Existing route choice models that can be estimated on disaggregate revealed preferences assume a deterministic network setting from the traveler's perspective and cannot capture the traveler's proactive adaptive behavior under uncertain traffic conditions. The literature includes a number of algorithmic studies of optimal routing policy problems, but the estimation of a routing policy choice model is a new research area. The specifications of estimating the two adaptive route choice models are established and the feasibility of estimation from path observations is demonstrated on an illustrative network. Prediction results from three models–nonadaptive path model, adaptive path model, and routing policy model–are compared. The routing policy model is shown to better capture the option value of diversion than the adaptive path model. The difference between the two adaptive models and the nonadaptive model is larger in terms of expected travel time if the network is more stochastic, indicating that the benefit of adaptivity is more significant in a more unpredictable network.

Reliable short-term prediction of bus travel time on signalized urban arterials is essential for improving service reliability and may provide a useful forecasting basis for prediction-informed transit signal priority (TSP) and arterial coordination applications. However, bus operations on urban arterials are highly variable due to stop dwell times, signal delays, and interactions with mixed traffic, leading to nonlinear and nonstationary travel time patterns with strong spatiotemporal dependence. This study proposes a hybrid KNN–ConvLSTM framework for short-term arterial bus travel time prediction using real-world field data. A K-nearest neighbors (KNNs) module is first employed to retrieve historical operation sequences that are most similar to the current corridor state, thereby reducing interference from mismatched traffic regimes and improving robustness. Smart-card (IC card) transaction data are incorporated as demand-related features to represent passenger activity and its impact on dwell time and travel time variability. The selected sequences are then organized into a corridor-ordered spatiotemporal representation and further refined by lightweight temporal enhancement operations, including relevance gating, multi-scale aggregation, adaptive feature fusion, and residual enhancement, before being fed into the convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) predictor. The proposed approach is evaluated using weekday service-hour data extracted from 30 days of real-world bus operation records collected from a typical urban arterial corridor in Changchun, China, and is compared with several benchmark models, including ARIMA, KNN, LSTM, CNN, ConvLSTM, Transformer, and DCRNN. The results indicate that the proposed KNN–ConvLSTM framework achieves an MAE of 40.1 s, an RMSE of 55.8 s, a SMAPE of 10.7%, and an R2 of 0.878, outperforming all benchmark models. Specifically, compared with the Transformer baseline, the proposed framework reduces MAE by 1.5%, RMSE by 5.1%, and SMAPE by 7.0%, while increasing R2 by 0.014. Compared with the DCRNN baseline, it reduces MAE by 10.7%, RMSE by 1.9%, and SMAPE by 2.7%, while increasing R2 by 0.008. These findings demonstrate that similarity-aware retrieval combined with spatiotemporal deep learning can substantially enhance short-term bus travel time prediction on signalized urban arterials. More accurate short-term forecasts may support prediction-informed transit signal priority and arterial coordination by providing more reliable downstream arrival-time estimates. However, the generalizability of the reported results is still constrained by the relatively short 30-day observation period and the single-corridor case setting, and the operational and environmental effects of downstream applications remain to be validated through dedicated closed-loop control evaluation in future work.

Real-time traffic status information provides good references for urban traffic control and management. Travel time is easy to understand and widely employed in representing traffic status. With significantly improved positioning accuracy and coverage, trajectory data collected from GPS-equipped probe vehicles have great potential for traffic state recognition. This paper presents a machine learning enabled travel time estimation method based on the GPS-equipped probe vehicles data. This research considers the spatial-temporal relevancy while solving the travel time allocation problem: the travel time of target segment might be associated with its previous travel times and/or the traffic states of nearby relevant segments. After data normalization and network clustering, an artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm considering such spatial-temporal relevancy was conducted to infer the travel time distribution among the traveled segments within one path. Furthermore, a weighted summation of the travel time estimation result from various trajectories was calculated to better represent the segment travel time in one time step. The proposed method was evaluated by evaluating the estimation results with automatic vehicle identification obtained ground truth. The experimental results illustrated that by utilizing the ANN to consider the spatial-temporal relevancy, the proposed method is effective and efficient in estimating the travel time.

A dynamic vehicle routing problem with time-dependent travel times

Transportation systems are inherently uncertain because of random disruptions; nevertheless, real-time information can help travelers make better route choices under such disruptions. The first revealed-preference study of routing policy choice is presented. A “routing policy” is defined as a decision rule applied at each link that maps possible realized traffic conditions to decisions to be made on the link next. The policy represents a traveler's ability to incorporate real-time information not yet available at the time of decision. Two case studies are conducted in Stockholm, Sweden, and in Singapore. Data for the underlying stochastic time-dependent network are generated from taxi GPS traces through map-matching and nonparametric link travel time estimation. An efficient algorithm to find the optimal routing policy in large-scale networks is first presented, which is a building block of any routing policy choice set generation method. The routing policy choice sets are then generated by link elimination and simulation. The generated choice sets are first evaluated on the basis of whether they include the observed traces on a specific day, or coverage. The sets are then evaluated on the basis of “adaptiveness,” defined as the capability of a routing policy to be realized as different paths over different days. A combination of link elimination and simulation methods yields satisfactory coverage. The comparison with a path choice set benchmark also suggests that a routing policy choice set could potentially provide better coverage and capture the adaptive nature of route choice.

Effect of real-time traffic information on the relaxation process is studied. The provision of traffic information on a real-time basis to individual vehicles is expected as an effective way to distribute the traffic flow to a network of roads. However, it has been also pointed out that real-time information prevents the distribution of the traffic flow on a network of roads because of the concentration of the traffic flow to the recommended route. We can see that the real-time traffic information based on averaged velocity or travel time give rise to fluctuation with chaotic structure on the relaxation process of traffic flow formed by cellular automata. It is also proposed that the real-time traffic information composed by differentiation of averaged velocity of vehicle is effective to reduce the fluctuation of traffic flow.

Transportation-based Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS), also known as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), have been introduced to increase traffic efficiency and safety. To reduce traffic congestion and traveling time, a number of real-time route guidance schemes have been developed to assist travelers in determining the optimal route for their transit. In this paper, we address the vulnerability issue of the route guiding process and study data integrity attacks against route guidance schemes. To be specific, we consider a generic attack, in which the adversary may compromise vehicles via wireless communication networks and then manipulate the real-time traffic information generated or forwarded by these vehicles, and finally broadcast the forged real-time traffic information into vehicular networks. We formally model the attack and quantitatively analyze its impact on the effectiveness of route guidance schemes. Our findings show that the investigated data integrity attack can effectively disrupt route guidance, resulting in significant traffic congestion, the increase of travel time, and the imbalanced use of transportation resources.

Solving in real-time the dynamic and stochastic shortest path problem for electric vehicles by a prognostic decision making strategy

Advance Traveller Information Systems (ATIS) are considered a promising tool to alleviate traffic congestion and improve road network performance. They provide real time traffic information and route recommendation to road users, in order to increase their ability to choose the best alternative path. Though such systems have reached a high technical standard, their actual impact in traffic pattern and network performance is controversial. The methodology used is based on a Multi Agent Simulation to model how the presence of information influences the driver's reactive behavior and the network efficiency. The case study is the well known network of the Braess' paradox and the specific aim is to find the proper route recommendation strategy to avoid that adding a new road to traffic network may result in increasing the total travel time. Through a software platform able to simulate a virtual road network, where single drivers interact with each other and with the spatial environment according to a defined behavior, that is their reaction to external outputs, two behavioral patterns will be simultaneously considered. The first refers to the driver's path choice among those available for a fixed origin-destination pair; the second refers, once the path is chosen, to the microscopic motion of each vehicle as a function of the leader vehicle along each link of the network. To simulate the presence of drivers equipped with ATIS system and drivers who are not, or equivalently to simulate different reactive behavior to the information provided, it has been used a variable “probability of feedback”. Pattern arrival vehicle flow can be varied together with speed and acceleration of the vehicles. The general purpose of the paper is to contribute to the analysis of the impact of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) technology in traffic pattern and network performance. The specific objective is modelling driver's behavior in road networks when real time traffic information is provided. The results show that a proper rate of provided information is able to reduce the effect of the Braess' paradox and that network performance increases when drivers' behavior is affected by their ability to see local traffic conditions.

Dangerous driving behaviors can lead to traffic accidents. However, there is a lack of systematic real-time driving monitoring and alerting mechanism. In this paper, nine major dangerous driving behaviors are identified and defined based on past researches and experiences. An on-board safety driving assistance system, which utilizes in-vehicle dynamics and real-time traffic information, is proposed to instantly detect dangerous driving behaviors and alert the driver during driving periods. The in-vehicle dynamics are collected from On-Board Diagnostics (OBD-II), an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The real-time traffic information is collected from a camera with image processing. The proposed system is implemented on a CPU board with a user interface (UI), which shows alerting icons when dangerous behaviors occur.