Bluetooth-Based Travel Time/Speed Measuring Systems Development
Record Type: UTC

Currently, agencies in the Houston region use toll tags to provide travel times on freeways and HOV lanes, but these systems require large amounts of costly and physically invasive infrastructure. Bluetooth is a widely used, small-scale, technology embedded in cellular telephones and in-vehicle applications. The initial demonstrations of wireless address matching were primarily designed to prove the ability for Bluetooth technology to produce matches between two known points, with a resulting travel time and speed calculated. Costs for Bluetooth travel time measurement systems are one to two orders of magnitude below costs for traditional toll tag reader equipment, depending on the application. This cost advantage could significantly lower the threshold for hundreds of agencies and private entities to enter the travel time measurement market, but there is little guidance on the application. There is a need to further develop and test the existing prototype software and hardware platforms that have been developed to use anonymous media access controller (MAC) address transmissions to measure and report real-time traffic conditions. There is a need to resolve several issues which have been noted by Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) staff when working with the initial prototype deployments. Resolving these issues is an important step in developing a true first generation “product.”
Start date: 2009/6/1
End date: 2010/5/31
Status: Active
Contract/Grant Number: DTRT06-G-0044
Secondary Number: 00044
Total Dollars: 58500
Source Organization: University Transportation Center for Mobility
Date Added: 06/25/2009
Index Terms: Bluetooth technology, Travel time, High occupancy vehicle lanes, Infrastructure, Media access control addresses, Houston (Texas), Technological innovations, Cellular telephones, Research projects, Traffic speed,

University Transportation Center for Mobility
http://utcm.tamu.edu
Texas Transportation Institute
Texas A&M University System
3135 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-3135
USA
Phone: (979) 845-2538
Fax: (979) 845-9761

Tooley, Melissa S
Phone: (979) 845-8545
Fax: (979) 845-9761
Email: m-tooley@tamu.edu

Texas Transportation Institute, Houston
http://tti.tamu.edu/groups/program.htm?p_org_code=HTM
Transit Mobility Program
Texas A&M University System
701 N. Post Oak, Suite 430
Houston, TX 77024
USA

Puckett, Darryl
Phone: (713) 686-2971
Email: d-puckett@tamu.edu