Hourly traffic volume estimation: radio frequency identification application

With the growing development of Information Technology (IT), various advanced research technologies have been applied to collect useful information in the area of transportation science. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system is one of ITs useful in transportation research. Specifically, traffic count and travel time can simply be obtained from the RFID reader installed on a probe vehicle. The RFID technique, however, is a sample survey, not a complete enumeration since not all vehicles have a RFID tag. In this paper, we propose a reasonable and objective methodology to estimate total traffic volumes from developing a simple regression model based on the sample obtained from the RFID technique. We also suggest a method that assesses the optimal proportion of RFID tags needed to provide reliable estimates of traffic volume. This will help transportation agencies to optimise a budget with limited funds set aside for RFID projects.