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216 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Practical Applications and Concepts for Transportation Data Analytics 217

tal investment, placing significant value on any tools or insight that can make
such investments as cost-effective as possible. It was identified that one of the
major factors in the decision to buy new buses related to the traffic conditions
experienced by buses on the roads along which the routes are operated. The
transit agency in question operates approximately 1,000 buses in the suburban
area of a major city. Consequently, many of the routes operate on arterials and
other roads with traffic signals. The overall concept for the use of the analytics
support approach to bus acquisition is to characterize prevailing traffic condi-
tions as experienced by the bus fleet, by applying analytical techniques to traffic
flows. In this case, rather than focusing on traffic turbulence, the average travel
time and travel time variability experienced by individual buses on bus routes
is the subject of the analysis. The approach is to develop an index that com-
bines travel time and travel time variability, along with data regarding schedule
compliance, to identify the optimum point at which bus acquisition should be
considered. It should also be noted that the use of adaptive coordinated traffic
signal management techniques, bus priority at intersections, contra flow bus
lanes, and special bus right-of-way could also be effective strategies to improve
the conditions encountered by buses and bus service quality levels along cor-
ridors, in addition to the acquisition of new buses.

Analytics
It is envisaged that the following analytics will be used in the development of a
bus acquisition support tool:

• Bus travel speeds per route;
• Individual bus schedule compliance;
• Average traffic speeds per route;
• Bus travel speed variability per route;
• Acceptable bus schedule compliance variation;
• Cost of bus schedule compliance variation.

10.9 Thoughts on the Use of Analytics

A few additional thoughts are offered in each of the five concepts, in terms of
the use of the analytics and the insight that can be achieved.

Freeway Management
During the analytics work several challenges were encountered. Some of the
challenges related to the building of a bridge between data science and transpor-