An Evaluation of Alternative Technologies to Estimate Travel Time on Rural Interstates

Travel time estimation is an integral part of transportation management. The use of advanced technologies in collecting travel time information has been a major concern to transportation engineers and system operators who rely on such data to improve safety and emergency response of transportation facilities. GPS and Bluetooth are two of the available technologies which are efficient and cost effective in collecting travel time data. This study focuses on the accuracy analysis of them. This thesis begins with a review of the theory of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) instruments. Then it illustrates the methods of travel time collection in three techniques, License Plate, Global Positioning System (GPS) and Bluetooth. Third, it outlines the method of processing of the data and the statistical method to compare the accuracy of GPS and Bluetooth. Last, it presents the results and analyzes the accuracy of two technologies