Evaluation of Cell Phone Traffic Data

Project summary:

Cellular phone tracking is a promising vehicle probe method that is likely to produce reliable travel-time information. To demonstrate the capabilities of a cell phone traffic data system, a pilot demonstration project was initiated by Mn/DOT in cooperation with a private contractor. As part of the demonstration project, traffic data provided by the contractor through cell phone tracking were evaluated and compared with data from alternative sources. The alternative travel-time data collected in the evaluation study included the freeway travel times generated using inductive loop detectors, travel-time runs using instrumented probe vehicles, and "ground truth" travel times determined by matching license plates through recorded video. A statistical data comparison and analysis was conducted, and results are summarized in the final report, published in vol. 2086 of the Transportation Research Record: http://trb.metapress.com/content/hv203u081g0036q3/.