A Bayesian Approach for Estimating Link Travel

Time on Urban Arterial Road Network

Taehyung Park1 and Sangkeon Lee2

1
Department of Industrial and Information Systems Engineering, Soongsil
University, Seoul, Korea
2
Korea Research Institute of Human Settlements, Anyang, Korea

Abstract. Recently, Korean Ministry of Construction and Transporta-

tion selects three cities as the Intelligent Transport Model City to build a
test bed for research in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). One of
the most sought-after information in any ITS project is to provide arterial
travel speed forecasts to travellers. To estimate the arterial travel speed,
one needs to apply a mathematical model supplied with sensor data gen-
erated by roadside sensors and in-vehicle sensors. In this research eort,
we develop a simple Bayesian estimator and an expanded neural network
model to estimate arterial link travel speed. Input data used are from
dual-loop detectors and probe vehicles with DSRC(Dedicated Short-
range Communication) device. Data from one of model city, Jeonju, are
used to generate test data for the simulation where the probe vehicles
speed is random sampled from observed vehicles speed. Initial run shows
that the neural network model developed can provide accurate estimates
of arterial link speed using only probe vehicles speed data.

1 Introduction
ITS enhances the utilization of existing transportation infrastructure, decreases
trac congestion, energy consumption and air pollution by use of the telecom-
munications, electronics, and control technologies. Trac management systems,
trac information systems, public trac information systems, cargo information
systems, intelligent car and road technologies are included in ITS research.
In the United States, ITS deployment has been started by joint eorts of the
U.S. Department of Transportation and ITS America. Major projects in U.S. in-
clude the National ITS Architecture, the Standards Development program, Com-
mericial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks(CVISN), the Metropoli-
tan Model Deployment Initiative(MMDI), transit programs, Rural ITS, pub-
lic safety activities, and the Evaluation program. In Europe, projects such as
PROMETHEUS(8695) and DRIVE(89) are developed by consotium of auto
companies and European Community. In Japan, dierent ITS initiatives by sev-
eral ministries of government were combined in the Vehicle Information and
Communication System(VICS) project in 91 and VICS provides travel time,
congestion, accidents, and road construction informations through FM multi-
plex broadcasting and roadside beacons since 95.

A. Lagana et al. (Eds.): ICCSA 2004, LNCS 3043, pp. 10171025, 2004.


c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004
1018 T. Park and S. Lee

In the eorts by Korean government, so called ITS master plan initiates

research & development of trac information system project and intelligent
transport model city project,and Daejeon, Jeonju, and Cheju are selected as the
intelligent transport model cities where intelligent trac signaling, electronic
toll collection systems, accident management, bus operation information systems
are deployed. Further information regarding the intelligent transport model city
projects are found in the web sites of Ministry of Construction and Transporta-
tion (www.moct.go.kr). For the public transit systems, several city governments
started Bus Information System(BIS) to provide real-time bus location and ar-
rival time forecasts to passengers and through internet.
In the center of trac management systems and trac information systems
lies the real-time forecasting of travel time of important arterial roads. Input data
for forecasting arterial travel time are obtained from CCTV, optical detectors,
dual-loop detectors, beacon-, or DSRC-based systems, GPS(Global Positioning
System), and AVI(Automatic Vehicle Identication) technologies. Among this,
dual-loop detectors are broadly deployed and provides average speed, average
occupancy, and ow information on the link. ITS center usually accumulates 30
seconds data and records maximum/minimum speed and maximum/minimum
occupancy besides speed, occupancy and ow data.
In this research, we show how Bayesian approach can provide better estimates
for the link travel time on urban arterial road network. In particular, we develop
two models based on Bayesian assumptions and compare the estimates with
the observed travel speeds on one of model city in Korea. The rst model we
suggest is based on the simple Bayesian estimator and the second model on
the neural network model. Existing approaches for estimating link travel times
are statistical approaches such as regression analysis, moving average, and time
series analysis, data fusion, fuzzy control theory, cellular automata theory, and
simulations.
Previous research on the estimation of uninterrupted link travel speed can be
found in [1], [2], [4], [11]. For the interrupted ows, the estimation of link travel
time is much harder problem. Recently several approaches are introduced using
statistical([5]), neural network models([6]), and cellular automata([7]).

2 Model Formulation
Simple Bayesian classier is dened as follows. Suppose X = (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 ) de-
notes a dual-loop detector output vector using 4 parameters(average speed, av-
erage occupance, ow, maximum occupancy) and Ci denotes vehicle with speed
i. Then given dual-loop detector reading, the maximum posteriori hypothesis is
given by Bayes theorem as
P (X|Ci )P (Ci )
Maximizei P (Ci |X) = .
P (X)
Here, P (Ci |X) denotes the probability of average vehicle speeds is in interval
i given dual-loop detector data X. The estimated speed is given as iM ax =
argmax P (Ci |X) when we obtain dual-loop data for that interval (see [10]).
 A Bayesian Approach for Estimating Link Travel Time 1019

To apply simple Bayesian classier, we need to estimate the probabilities

P (X|Ci ) and P (Ci ). Because the dual-loop output and speed measurements are
all continous real number, to estimate the probability, one needs to divide the
dual-loop output and speed into discrete intervals. As more data available, one
can have more ne grid points. In this paper, we divide each parameter of dual-
loop detector as 3 intervals thus, there are 34 = 81 regions on R4 and divide
the speed data into 3 intervals.
As our second classier, we develop an expanded neural network based on
basic 3-layer neural network with one input layer, one hidden layer, and one
output node. For the general introduction of neural network is found in reference
[10]. Neural network N is dened as follows. N consists of input layer nodes i =
1, . . . , I, hidden layer nodes, j = 1, . . . , J, and output layer nodes k = 1, . . . , K,
and on edge (j, i), weight wji , and on (k, j), wkj are given. These weights are
initially selected as a random number between 0 and 1, and later updated by a
steepest descent
I algorithm over a learning data set. xi denotes input to node i
and netj = i=1 wji xi + wj0 x0 input value to node j. Output value from node
j is yj = (netj ), where () is a sigmoid function with (u) = 1/(1 + eu ).

J
For node k, input value is netk = j=1 wkj yj and output value is ok = (netk ).
Weight wj0 represents a bias and x0 = 1.
The learning phase of a neural network requires a learning data set
(x1d , . . . , xId ) with (t1d , . . . , tkd ), d = 1, . . . , D where (t1d , . . . , tkd ) denotes tar-
get values of output nodes 1, . . . , k. In our model, the output node is only one
and target value is average observed vehicle speeds on a link.
In the backpropagation algorithm, optimal

weight vectors wji and wkj are
found to minimize the error function E = d k (tkd okd )2 over the training
data set. This error is dened as the squared error between neural network output
okd and target value tkd . In each iteration of the backpropagation algorithm, cur-
rent weight wji is updated by moving to the negative gradient wji = w E
ji
.
Here, denotes the learning rate and has value between 0 and 1. In this paper,
we set = 0.1. Our basic neural network model consists of 3 input nodes, 10
hidden layer nodes, and 1 output node.

2.1 Ramication of the Basic Model

The output data obtained from a dual-loop detector are the following 7-tuple
( average speed( l1 ), average occupancy (l2 ), ow (l3 ), maximum speed (l4 ),
minimum speed (l5 ), maximum occupancy (l6 ), minimum speed (l7 ) ). For each
output data li , average, variance, predened maximum value, minimum value are
denoted as li , V ar(li ), limax , and limin . In this case, the upper(Ui ) and lower(Li )
bounds for input data li are dened as follows.
 
Ui = M in{limax , li + 4 V ar(li )}, Li = M ax{limin , li 4 V ar(li )}

Using upper and lower bound, all input data are scaled to a value between 0
and 1.
1020 T. Park and S. Lee

We compared our basic neural network model with one with one more input
node accepting value from l4 to l7 . We found that with l6 added, the basic neural
improves most with respect to observed travel speed.
Also, (l4 l5 ) and (l6 l7 ) represent ranges for speed and occupancy, respec-
tively. We plotted the ow and (l4 l5 ) and found that only 5% of the trac
ows have (l4 l5 ) values exceeding 50 km/hr. Also, in only 5% of the ow
(l6 l7 ) exceeds 60%. Since smaller the sample size is, less reliable the average
value is, We apply a penalty value in the case of either (l4 l5 ) exceeding 50
km/hr or (l6 l7 ) exceeding 60%.
The new weights of links (j, 1) and (j, 2) are calculated as wj1 = wj1 (1 v ),
l5 )40
and rv = (l49040 I{l4 l5 >40} +0I{l4 l5 40} . Similarly, wj2 = wj2 (1occ ), and
occ = (l6 l 7 )0.25
10.25 I{l6 l7 >0.25} + 0 I{l6 l7 0.25} . We denote the neural network
with modied wj1 and wj2 as the second model. Figure 1 shows the second
model.

Fig. 1. The Basic Neural Network Model with 4 Input Nodes

If a link doesnt have a dual-loop detector installed, we connect input values

of upper and lower stream dual-loop detectors to the neural network of the link
that doesnt have a detector. Because of time-space relationship between the
upper stream ows and down stream ows, we apply delay for the input data
from upper stream detectors and negative delay for the lower stream input data.
That is, the learning data set (x1,d+ , . . . , xI,d+ , t1d , . . . , tkd ) are used as training
data set for the neural network of zero detector link in period d. Here, the is
the average travel time from upper stream link to the zero detector link. This
model is illustrated in Figure 2.

2.2 Backpropagation Algorithm

In the following algorithm, the learning data set is used repeatedly until the stop-
ping criterion is met. The maximum number of iteration, M axIter = 100, 000,
 A Bayesian Approach for Estimating Link Travel Time 1021

Upper Stream Link Link with Zero Detector Lower Stream Link

Output Output Output

. . .
Hidden Hidden Hidden

. .
Input bias Input

Fig. 2. The Model Three for Zero Detector Link

learning rate = 0.1,  = 0.001, and the following iteration is repeated until the
stopping criterion is met.
Step 1 (feedforward). The training data set (x1d , . . . , xId , t1d , . . .

, tkd ), d =
d
1, . . . , D are applied, then for each hidden layer node j, netjd = i wji xid ,

d
yjd = (netjd ). For each output node k, netkd = j wkj yjd , okd = (netkd ).

Step 2 (obtain gradient). For each k, kd = (tkd okd )okd (1 okd ), gradient
d
vectors wkj = kd yjd , k, j. For each j, jd = yjd (1 yjd )kd wkj
d
, gradient
vectors wji = jd xid , j, i.
d

d+1 d d d+1
Step 3 (update weight vectors). wkj = wkj + wkj , j = 1, . . . , J. wji =
d d
wji + wji , i = 1, . . . , I.

Step 4 (Termination Check). If the following condition is satised, or if

d = M axIter, stop. Otherwise, go to Step 1.


d+1
j (w0j w0j ) + wji
d+1 d 2 d )2
i (wji


d 2 <
d+1 2
j (w0j ) + i (wji )

3 Computational Results

The computation we show in this section is based on the data collected on

Whasan-ro during 23rd and 24th of April, 2003 in Jeonju, and dual-loop detector
data collected in the same period. The observation was made during 7-9AM and
2-4PM, 4 hours in a day. Whasan-ro is an arterial road consisting of 6 links.
Among these links, link 5 doesnt have dual-loop detector installed. Manual
data are collected by recording all passing cars last four digits of license plate
number at the 7 intersections on Whasan-ro. The unit time of observation was 5
seconds. If a particular car number is observed at the consecutive points within
1022 T. Park and S. Lee

5 minutes, we regard that the car was passed the link connecting those two
consecutive points.
Dual-loop detector data are transmitted to the BIS center, and summarized
for 5 minutes interval. The number of periods during two day observation is 48
time intervals. If there are more than one detector installed on a link, we use
arithemetic mean of each detectors output as that links output. If there is no
observed link ows after we remove irregular data, we skip that periods learning.
If the time dierence between two consecutive observation exceeds 5 minutes, or
if the calculated speed exceeds 90km/h, we discard that data.
We developed a parse program to calculate the observed link travel speed
from original excel les lled by observers. The length of 6 links, the total number
of vehicles observed, regular vehicle data, number of iterations for the neural
networks over observed vehicle speeds and over DSRC-random sample data are
recorded in Table 1.

Table 1. Information of links, regular data, and iterations

1 2 3 4 5 6
link length(m) 646.2 474.4 944.2 924.2 229.4 668.5
# detector 1 1 2 2 0 2
# total obs car 3493 1077 624 1508 2696 2920
# regular obs car 2712 873 489 1203 2405 2571
iter. # of nn over obs sp 21559 9362 17777 22232 574 22218
iter. # of nn over dsrc 21463 459 13407 28910 861 383

According to Table 1 , the number of irregular samples are from 23% to 11%
among total samples and the number of regular sample is from 77.6% to 89.2%.
Thus, recording last four digits of license plate number at the end of each link
cannot sample all vehicles speed. Also, the manual sampling method is costly.
One explanation of small percentage of irregular data is that there are a lot of
car plate numbers coninciding last four digits. Observer faults, and the number
of incoming vehicles from crossing links too could cause sampling errors.
The number of iterations for the neural networks both over all observed vehi-
cles and over DSRC-probe vehicles show that most of learning phases converge
soon. If new learning data are available in the future, existing weights wji and
wkj could be used as starting solution.
To simulate the eect of DSRC probe vehicle as learning data, we randomly
sampled two vehicle in a given link during each time interval as probe vehicles.
For normal neural network model(we denote nn sp as the output of this model),
we use the average of all observed vehicles speed as target value and for DSRC
model, we use the average of two sample cars speed as target value. The output
of the neural network over DSRC data is denoted as dsrc sp.
 A Bayesian Approach for Estimating Link Travel Time 1023

35

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Fig. 3. Comparison of various estimators to observed link 1 speed

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Fig. 4. Comparison of various estimators to observed link 2 speed

In Figure 3 we compared the performance of various estimator to the ob-

served link travel speed. In Figure 3, obs sp denotes observed link travel speed,
dsrc sp neural network estimator over dsrc simulation data, bayes sp simple
Bayesian classier, and nn sp neural network over observed link travel speed
learning data. The simple Bayesian classiers travel speed shows that the esti-
mator outputs only speed in 30km/h or 10km/h. This comes from the fact that
we only use 3 speed grid points because of lack of data. If we have more data, the
coarseness of simple Bayesian classier will improve. The performance of dsrc
sp and nn sp are almost same in Figure 3. Also, both neural network models
error with respect to observed link speed is less than 10km/h.
1024 T. Park and S. Lee

30

25

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speed

dsrc sp
15
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0 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
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time

Fig. 5. Comparison of various estimators to observed link 2 speed

In Figure 4, we can see that there is consistent over-estimation of dsrc sp

compared with nn sp. This suggest that if we use probe vehicles such as bus
or taxi, there will be some bias to the real link travel speed.

4 Conclusion
In this paper, we compared a simple Bayesian classier, a neural network model
over observed link travel speed learning data, and a neural network model over
random sample speed learning data. The simulation of DSRC probe vehicle is
carried by random sampling of two vehicles as DSRC probe vehicles. We apply
our estimators to the real data we obtained during two day period in one of
ITS model city in Korea. Our result shows that with good learning data, simple
neural network provides good estimators for urban arterial links. Also, if we use
DSRC-probe vehicles speed as target values for the neural networks, the output
estimator can show some biases generated by the characteristics of probe vehicle
type. We expect that bus as a probe vehicle will generate over- or estimators
if there is special bus lanes in links. For a simple Bayesian classier, with only
48 samples, the performance of simple Bayesian classier is promising. With
more data accumulated by probe vehicles, the peformance of both approach we
suggest improve. Application of our model over data generated by real probe
vehicles speed is one of the next topic of research.

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