Automated Delay Identification for Bus Travel Time Prediction towards APTS Applications

Passenger information systems about bus arrival at bus stops, which is an integral part of any advanced public transportation systems (APTS) application, is catching the attention of traffic engineers in India in recent years. APTS, by making the public transport system more attractive, will encourage people shift from personal mode to public mode for their transport, thus relieving congestion. There are different approaches of APTS that try to make public transport systems more desirable to commuters and one among them is accurate arrival time prediction at bus stops. This will reduce the wait time and associated uncertainties. There have been many studies reported which looked into the problem of bus arrival time prediction or travel time prediction. However, studies which deal with automatic incorporation of delays explicitly into travel time prediction are limited. Further, studies focusing on travel time prediction under heterogeneous traffic conditions are scarce. The present study attempts to identify delays automatically and explicitly incorporate them in predicting the total travel time of buses under heterogeneous traffic conditions such as those existing in India. The results obtained are corroborated with actual data and found to be promising.