Development of a real-time bus arrival prediction system for Indian traffic conditions

The accuracy of Bus Traveler Information Systems (BTIS) depends on several factors such as accuracy of the input data, speed of data transfer, data quality control and performance of the prediction scheme. A majority of the existing BTIS in India does not take into account the real-time data and the quality control of data. Also, there is a scope for improving the performance of the underlying prediction schemes. There are several studies on real-time bus arrival time prediction under homogeneous traffic conditions. However, the traffic condition in India is different and direct implementation of those studies may not yield the best results. One of the main components of bus travel time is the delay time at bus stops, in addition to the other common delays. These delays need to be incorporated in the prediction scheme for better accuracy, which is not the case currently in most studies. Also, there is a need to develop an accurate automated bus arrival time prediction system using real-time data under heterogeneous traffic conditions. This study presents a model-based algorithm that uses real-time data from field and takes delays automatically into account for an accurate prediction of bus arrival time. The results obtained are compared with the currently adopted field method and show a clear improvement in the prediction accuracy.