Public Transport Occupancy Estimation using WLAN Probing and Mathematical Modeling

Abstract The rapid urbanization and consequent metropolization of cities are phenomena present in many countries around the World. This increment in urban population causes changes in personal relationships and in the physical structure of cities. Among the transformations caused by metropolization, the most noteworthy are the changes in urban mobility systems. In emerging countries, the problems generated by this situation are exacerbated, since the social, environmental and, mainly, economic characteristics make the solution of problems related to urban transportation very difficult. As consequences, it is common to have daily commutes happening mostly by road transport, absence of effective public policies and poor transport data acquisition. Common ways to achieve quality in public transportation systems are to estimate the public transport occupancy (PTO) rate and the origin-destination matrix for a given area. This paper presents a formulation and study for the use of a low cost and reduced computational complexity system, capable of counting in real time the amount of passengers inside a public transportation unit (bus or metro composition). This system performs passenger counting through users’ smartphones electronic fingerprints and uses a mathematical model to adjust the acquired raw values. The applicability of this approach is demonstrated through case studies carried out in 3 different bus lines in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as an alternative to collect field data for the management of public transportation. It is demonstrated that the suggested system presents good accuracy and is a reduced complexity alternative for the estimation of PTO in emerging countries.