Modelling of Cell-based AVL for Improving Bus Services

Increasing growth in car ownership and private car usage is leading to high levels of congestion and pollution in many busy towns and cities. A reliable and efficient public transport service is one of the solutions for future transport provision. The development of a novel cell-based Automatic Vehicle Locationing system for public transport application is presented in this paper. The technique uses the existing AVL system and combines it with cellular technologies. Little modification is required to turn the existing AVL sequential polling system to the simultaneous cell-based AVL polling system. The fundamental advantage of the cell-based approach to AVL is that direct communication between the vehicles and the cell-based station enables the vehicle fleet to be polled simultaneously. Cell-based AVL System offers possibility for improved public transport service and public transport priority through frequent update of vehicle position and vehicle information. Modelling of cell-based AVL systems using a simulation method is given in this paper. The results show that the polling time for a bus fleet using the cell-based technique is considerably lower than the conventional sequential polling AVL system.