Dynamic Prediction Method with Schedule Recovery Impact for Bus Arrival Time

Abstract

This study develops a dynamic bus arrival time prediction model using the data collected by the automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter systems. It is based on the Kalman filter algorithm with a two-dimensional state variable in which the prediction error in the most recent observation is used to optimize the arrival time estimate for each downstream stop. The impact of schedule recovery is considered as a control factor in the model to reflect the driver's schedule recovery behavior. The algorithm performs well when tested with a set of automatic vehicle location–automatic passenger counter data collected from a real-world bus route. The algorithm does not require intensive computation or an excessive data preprocessing effort. It is a promising approach for real-time bus arrival time prediction in practice.