Bluetooth as a traffic sensor for stream travel time estimation under Bogazici Bosporus conditions in Turkey.

Travel time estimation is an integral part of Intelligent Transportation Systems, and has been an important component in traffic management and operations for many years. Travel time, being spatial in nature, requires spatial sensors to measure it accurately. Bluetooth is emerging as a promising technology for the direct measurement of travel time, and is reported in a few studies from homogenous traffic conditions. At the same time, there have been no studies on the applicability of Bluetooth for travel time estimation in heterogeneous traffic seen in Istanbul and even that Turkey. Bluetooth data collected from a busy urban road in Istanbul city have been analyzed and the penetration rate was found to be about 5 %. Two wheelers and light motor vehicles have been detected using the Bluetooth sensor and the data have been extrapolated to estimate travel times of other classes of vehicles. The study developed linear relationships between speeds of different classes of vehicles through weighted linear regression methods and were used for the estimation of stream travel time. The results obtained were promising and show that Bluetooth is a cost-effective technology for estimation of travel time for heterogeneous traffic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]