2001 IEEE intelligent Transportation Systems Conference Proceedings - Oakland (CA), USA - August 25-29,2001

The use of Mobile Phones

in Traffic Management and Control
Vittorio Astarita and Michael Florian
capability will be present in almost every car in the
world
(see the experimental survey in the
following).
In this paper the main lines of some of the new
possibilities in monitoring traffic and in deploying
new control strategies are discussed.
The possibilities open to these new applications are
enormous, given:
-the extraordinary diffusion of mobile phones in
some European countries, which in some cases has
already overcome fixed phones by number of
subscribers;
-the new technological developments in the field of
mobile phone data transmission;
-The implementation of E-91 1 in USA and the
potential economical interest of mobile phone
producers and mobile phone network operators for
mobile phone localization systems.
This paper after briefly describing some of the
possible utilization of mobile phone in traffic
management and control focuses on Mobile Phone
toll collection and on the use of mobile phones
localization data to estimate trafj;c dynamic o/d
matrices and travel times.
New possibilities are open for mobile phone
applications in the following fields (seefig. I ) :
-Toll collection.
-The estimation of traffic flow parameters.
-Traveler Information systems and navigation.
-Parking Control and management.
-Congestion Road pricing.

this paper some of the new possibilities in

monitoring traffic and in deploying new control
strategies with the use of mobile phones localization
data are discussed.
The possibilities open to these new applications are
enormous given:
-the extraordinary diffusion of mobile phones ;
-the new technological developments in the field of
mobile phone data transmission;
-The implementation of E-911 in USA and the
potential economic interest of mobile phone producers
and mobile phone network operators towards mobile
phone localization systems.
Mobile phone based toll collection is discussed and a
new traffic monitoring system is introduced that can
produce estimates for dynamic o/d matrices and the
evaluation of travel times. The idea of the system
(which is covered in Italy by an industrial patent), is to
use all the localization data that the mobile network
operators already have to obtain estimates of o/d
traffic matrices. The methodology is analyzed in order
to establish statistical properties and calibration
methodologies.
Index ternts--old matrix estimation, traffic monitoring,
mobile phones localization systems.

Abstract-In

I.

INTRODUCTION

The mobile commerce (ni commerce recalling e

commerce) has been defined in Skiba et al. (1999)
as: the use of mobile hand-held devices to
communicate, inform, traiisact and entertain using
text and data via connection to public and private
networks.
Application of Mobile commerce to traffic
management and control can be possible in the near
future by applying the mobile phone data
transmission functions to communicate and operate
financial transactions while moving on a road
network.
The amazing growth of mobile communications in
Europe and especially in Italy is well known:
according to Nilsson (1999) the total number of
mobile telephony subscribers in the world will pair
the number of fixed telephony subscribers before
the end of 2004. Long before that, third generation
of mobile phones (UMTS and CDMA2000) will
appear on all the markets, allowing everyone to
connect easily to the intemet at a speed up to 2
Mbit/s. In this new scenario, it is easy to guess that,
a digital mobile phone with data transmission

Figure I (above) New ,fields .for nzobile conzmerce applied to

traffic management and control.

This paper focuses on Electronic Toll Collection

(ETC) through the use of mobile phones and on the
estimation of traffic flow parameters b y using
mobile phones localization data. Those are the two
fields that first may have useful and effective
implementations in vehicular traffic control.
An introduction to digital mobile phones and the
new generation of mobile phones (3G) with data
transmission capability is given in section 11. In
section I11 some applications of mobile phones to
traffic maiiagement and control are outlined. Some

Universita della Calabria DIPITER. Arcavacata,

Cosenza. E-mail: vastarit@unina.it

0-7803-7194-1/01/$10.00
02001 IEEE

10

problems connected with mobile phones location

systems are summarized in section IV. The problem
of toll collection is presented in section V where the
possibility of using mobile phones in toll collection
is introduced. Section VI recalls the work that has
been done in developing a new toll plaza traffic
simulation model. The model is useful to evaluate
the introduction of new toll collection systems.
Moreover in section VI1 a patented system for
traffic parameter estimation from mobile phones
location data is introduced.
The paper due to the lack of space it is only a very
brief introduction to all the above mentioned topics.

and Natsuno e f al., 2000)

111. SOME APPLICATIONS OF MOBILE PHONES TO
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL

Many will be the possibilities open to network

traffic control and management when traveler
information systems and navigation will be
integrated into a single phone terminal. Phones will
be connected to a car navigation terminal and a
multimedia interface via IR data transmission (or
the new bluetooth short distance radio standard), or
the phone in itself will have this capacities.
Parking operations could be completely automated:
payments will be effectuated by phone by encrypted
short text messages and parking spot availability
will be known in advance allowing drivers to avoid
full parking lots or even to reserve a parking spot
ftom home. Congestion road pricing will be
possible allowing cities and road management to
add a varying toll calibrated so as to avoid
environmental emergencies very common in Italy.
One of the big potential benefits of mobile data
phones in traffic management is the possibility of
callecting toll from car drivers avoiding queues as
described in the following sections. All those
applications will be applied only when
standardization will emerge and is strongly
believed by the author that this standardization will
be reached with the convergence of intemet into)
digital mobile phones.

11. THEDIFFUSION OF MOBILE PHONES AND MOBILE

DATA TRANSMISSION

Mobile communications in Europe has had an

amazing growth with the diffusion of phones based
on GSM standard. USA are going to follow once
digital system standard like GSM, TDMA, PDC and
CDMA will be introduced. It is commonly believed
that mobile phones will be the entrance point to the
Internet when 3G phones with improved data
transmission capabilities will be introduced. In Italy
UMTS 3G experimental networks are already being
tested by Telecom Italia Mobile and Omnitel.
According to Nilsson (1 999) by 200312004 the
number of mobile telephony subscription in the
world will approach one billion, the number of
Tiitemet subscribers will raise to one billion users by
2004 and more than 350 million will be mobile
Internet subscribers. The 1st of January 2000 the
Italian company Omnitel has delivered 18 inillion of
short text messages (SMS) among more than 10
million subscribers and after a growth in subscribers
number of 68% from 1998 to 1999. With data
transmission capabilities, 2G and 3G mobile phones
will in fact allow convergence between internet and
mobile applications. The third-generation systems
will provide support for high data transmission rates
from at least 144 kbit/s to 2 Mbitis.
Wireless Application Protocol has been developed
as a standard for wireless internet-based information
services to digital mobile phones. In the future
mobile phones will be able to access also HTML
contents (Microsoft and Ericcson have started a
recent common project to implement a mobile
version of Explorer on new phones).
The convergence between Internet and mobile
phones will affect and give solutions to some of the
problems we face today in traffic control and
management. Some of those new developineiits are
already on their way: for example new phones are
being recently developed with GPS receiver,
electronic maps, and navigation features.
Some implementation on the field of mobile phones
application in traffic management and control can
already be found
with the i-mode system
developed by NTT DoCoMo (see Kurokawa. 2000

Iv. THELOCALIZATION OF MOBILE PHONES AND

SOME PRIVACY PROBLEMS

In the USA the implementation of Enhanced 91 1

service will drive a fast implementation of
localization systems by the network operators. This
kind of services that have already been implemented
by some European operators will grow in Europe
because localization of phone terminals is the key to
services with a high added value.
The following localization systems are deployable
according to Swedberg of Ericsson (1999): Cell
Global Identity (CGI), enhanced Cell Global
Identity + Timing Advance (CGI+TA), Time of
Arrival (TOA), Enhanced Observed Time
Diffcrence (E-OTD) and
Global Positioning
System (GPS). On a given network the localization
data can be gathered also using different
localization standards. More information on
accuracy of localization data specific to road
transportation problems can be found in the works
of Makimura et al. (2000), Ishida et al. (2000) and
Asakura et al. (2000).
The knowledge of all the movements and positions
of users on wireless networks originates questions
about the respect of Privacy. It is important to
outline that wireless network operators already have
at disposal location information as the only way

11

they have to connect a phone call is by knowing the

position of the phone. No problem of privacy is
involved here as the wireless network operators
need the information to provide service. Privacy
problems are connected with the use of information
more than with the pure owning. The use of
localization data by external entities, for example to
produce measures of travel times or traffic flows
could violate privacy of individuals when from this
information it is possible to reconstruct the
movements of a single user on the road network.
Without the user authorization according to laws of
different countries it could be a problem for an
extemal traffic management or information agency
to obtain this kind of data. To overcome this
problem the wireless network operator should
provide aggregate information that are useful for
traffic monitoring purposes, but not useful to
pinpoint single users. Desensibilization of
information techniques could be used, similar to
those used in pharmaceutical and medical
researches, to extract traffic flow parameters and to
guarantee privacy to wireless users.

-A standard digital mobile phone on the vehicle

(FSM or UMTS) with a SIM card, which is
qualified to receive the service through a
subscription.
-A data bank containing the global identification
data of authorised terminals.
-A local base transceiver station (BTS) with a welllimited area of influence (a different cell for every
toll lane).
-At the end of the toll lane a moveable gate and/or
traffic light (to allow only the passage of
subscribers) ruled by a local control informative
system.
This is the sequence of events that starts when the
phone establishes communication with the system:
The base transceiver station subsystem starts the
protocol to check the level of authorisation to the
service: in addition to the standard mobile phone
communication it is necessary that the mobile phone
is recognised by the system as one of the subscriber
(We do not enter into details regarding the
transmission protocol which are also determined by
the mobile phone standard. Though it is necessary
to say that the data bank that contains the
subscribers information can be more or less
centralised in the sense that a central data bank
exists, but information can be sent to local data
bank in order to alleviate the recognising process).
2) The central toll control system, after the
verification of the right to pass, opens the gate to
the subscriber.
3) The system can then send a short text message
(SMS) indicating the paid amount.
In the case of toll road with a toll paid at the exit (as
a function of the origin) the procedure will be
repeated two times and a SMS will be sent also at
the exit. If the users has not enough credit the gate
will not open and the user will be forced to move to
a manual toll lane. Different short text messages can
be sent to the subscriber to inform of the system
functionalities.
The system is:
Transparent to subscribers because the tolls paid are
always known and the residual amount on the
prepaid account is always under control.
Anonymous because when prepaid there is no
necessity to leave personal data or other information
to the toll road network operator (in this case the
toll road network operator has enough technical
information on the phone internal card number, but
is not able to know who is the subscriber). Easv
because it is not necessary to install anything into
the car.
The system has also so many other potential
applications that authorities could decide to force
the installation of mobile phones on any new car:
Automatic parking fee collection.
Automatic toll collection in traffic
restricted urban areas.

v . MANUAL
AND AUTOMATIC TOLL COLLECTION
The practice of manual toll collection in urban areas
has been criticised in academic and not academic
reports. Sometime the economic Benefit-Cost
evaluation of Manual Toll Collection System
(MTCS) (considering environmental externalities)
could suggest the complete dismissing of this kind
of road pricing. A new raising altemative has been
given by the application of Electronic Toll
Collection (ETC). ETC can be performed by using
an Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) system.
AV1 allows an automated collection of tolls from
subscribers eliminating the need for stopping and
thus effectively reducing vehicle emissions. With
the introduction of AV1 the capacity of a single toll
lane increases significantly reducing and removing
over-saturated bottlenecks. An experimental survey
(Astarita et al. 1998) has showed that a capacity
value of 1200 veh/h for AV1 Lanes based on the
TelepassO system compared to a capacity on
manual lanes between 2 15 and 240 veh!h depending
on heavy vehicles flow rate and price to pay. Such
capacity is reached because in AV1 lanes vehicles
do not need to stop, but they only slow down in
order to be recognised by the system. Many
research paper have been presented starting from
90's on the ETC subject and on the environmental
impact of toll stations and some of them have
studied specific aspects of the problem giving a
clear view of the problem.
A new toll collection system based on mobile phone
payment is proposed here that has a potential to be
interesting for both commuters and occasional
driver.
The system for a toll lane is composed of:

12

Entrance control in traffic restricted urban

areas.
Entrance control in special lanes for
transit, taxi or special authorized vehicles.
A good control of personal information use is
needed by road toll collection management to
protect the privacy of subscribers, but according to
a survey (see Pietrzyk and Mierzejewski, 1993)
held in San Francisco Bay Area only 7% of car
driver showed concern about the possibility to
register their movements. Moreover subscriber to
ETC and mobile phones are voluntary and
information regarding their movements is necessary
to give them the services they want.

Using data from instrumented vehicle is the only

methodology that can give a direct estimation of
travel times on networks.

B. The estimation of dynamic o/d matrices

This problem has also been studied by Helinga and
Van Aerde (Van Aerde et al. 1993) and more
recently by Dixon and Rilett(2000). The concept of
market penetration is introduced, by Van Aerde, as
the ratio between the total number of instrumented
vehicles and the total number of vehicles. The paper
was addressed to the analysis of general probe
vehicles. In the case of mobile phones it is possible
to think in terms of probability for a vehicle of
bebg an instrumented vehicle. So the probability
P
is defined, here, as the probability, for a
generic vehicle that is moving between origin o and
destination d in the interval k, of being identified by
the system. It can be hypothesized that this
probability values depend only on the old pair and
interval considered.
The number of movements flXi between origin o and
destination d in interval k can be estimated by using
the measure of instrumented vehicles recognized by
the system Nr,,:, , obtaining the estimator:

VI. THETRAFFIC SIMULATION MODEL DEVELOPED

TO ANALYSE TOLL PLAZAS

A traffic simulation model has been developed and

is the subject of another paper (see Astarita et al.,
1998) to evaluate emissions, delays and queues in a
toll plaza with mixed manual and automatic lanes.
The model simulates explicitly the toll plaza layout
and allows to observe situations in which, because
of the limited capacity of manual toll gates, queues
spill back interfering and reducing Electronic Toll
Collection (ETC) gates capacities.
VII. THEESTIMATION OF TRAVEL TIMES AND
DYNAMIC O/D MATRICES

jj

Knowing the position of mobile phones on the road

network allows to obtain travel times and dynamic
old matrices. A filter is necessary to pinpoint the
phones that are moving along roads on vehicles
with a speed that is not compatible with walking.

- NrA:<l
P od

(2)
If the probability 1'
is known a priori a
confidence interval for the estimation can be found.
We have:

r,'

A . The estimation of travel times

The problem of estimating travel times from
instrumented vehicles has been studied by Helinga
and Van Aerde (Van Aerde et al. 1993). The
problem becomes a sampling problem when it is
assumed that there is no difference in average
distribution speed between the instrumented and the
non instrumented vehicles (otherwise a systematic
error is introduced). Instrumented vehicles are those
that can be followed by the system during the trip
from the origin to the destination.
In this case the average travel time between an old
pair can be estimated in an interval T using the
average of the travel times of instrumented vehicles.
Sampling theory tells that the variance CT in the
estimation is dependent on the variance CTT of
travel times and on the number N, of instrumented
vehicles moving between origin o and destination
d':

and:

because Nr tr, is a binomial random variable.

Using the normal approximation to the binomial
distribution:
(5)

It is possible to find a confidence interval with

probability ct as:

'

movements of vehicles leaving o in interval T and

directed to d or as all the movements of vehicles
arrived at destination d in interval T .

It has to be noted that the movements between o

and d in interval T can be defined in two different
ways: it is possible to define them as all the

13

thus obtaining the interval:

Fig. 2. The estiniation of probabilities P dd by coupling
traditional measitres o f f l o w s on the road network turns into U
ofequations without unique solution.

sjistem

But probability P :,I would be directly measurable

only in special situations as a toll road with toll
stations at all entrances and exits. In this situation
(that is common in Italy) all the movement on the
toll network are known for each old pair together
with entrance and exit times. Only in those special
cases it would be possible to obtain an exact
measure of the Pk<.,ivalues.
In general the f J values have to be estimated by a
more or less accurate methodology. In this case an
evaluation of the accuracy in the estimation of X I
values can be done in the same way as above but
introducing the uncertainty in the estimation o f !he
:,I
values, for brevity sake this development is
omittyd and, instead, the problems in the estimation
of P values are discussed.
The values of 1' :,I can be estimated by coupling
traditional measures of flows with cellular phone
system measures of Nr;,tl values or through road
user interviews.
The estimation of P " I values by using flow
measures on the road network presents some
difficulties. The mathematical problems is without a
unique solution in most networks. As an example in
figure 2 measuring the flow at location f does not
allow to evaluate the percentages of instrumented
vehicles (percentages khat can be used as estimators
of the probabilities P r,cr ) moving from origins 1 and
2 and going to destinations I and 2, because the
flow i n f will be composed of vehicles of four
different o/d pairs. Moreover even a measure on all
the links of the network in figure will not solve the
problem, that is not correctly defined, and is exactly
equivalent to the problem of estimating o/d flows
from only traffic counts.
To estimate probabilities P it is necessary to use
the same methods that have been proposed for the
estimation (correction) of o/d matrices from traffic
counts.
In the dynamic case this methodologies follow the
scheme indicated in figure 3. An a priori old matrix
is used together with traffic counts for the
estimation of the corrected matrix (Cascetta e
Nguyen, 1988; Cascetta et al., 1993).

Estimation o f 0 - D Matrix from Traffic comb

, -

M,l>,,",,"~l""

Dynamic Traffic Assignment

oftIw&
0,dlmttarrr
8

Estimated
0 - D Matrix

Traffic counts

Fig. 3. The correction of dynamic old niatrices .fkom traflk

counts (Cascetta e N p j m . 1988; Cascetta et al. 1993).

The estimation is obtained by minimizing the sum

of two differences: the difference between traffic
flows obtained by an assignment procedure based
on the corrected matrix and the measured flows; and
the difference between the a priori o/d matrix and
the corrected matrix. The difficulty in applying this
procedure is that a dynamic assignment procedure
has to be perforped repeatedly.
To estimate P values the same procedure can be
applied: the only difference is that instead of havhg
an a priori o/d matrix, an a priori estimation of P od
values is coupled with the counted instrumented
vehicles N<kl. This two set of values combined
generate a matrix equivalent to the needed a priori
o/d matrix. In a first estimation, a single value
common to all o/d pairs and time intervals could be
used for the a priori P 1.1 values.
To obtain perceniage values, that could be used as
an estimate of P r x / values, the indicated procedure
has to solve the same minimization problem with
iterated procedures o f dynamic traffic assignment.
The methodology, above explained is very onerous
because involves an iterated dynamic assignment
procedure; The methodology could be useful if the
values P
are significantly different one Erom the

ll.~

rlil

other but if the P

!,I

values are similar the procedure

results clearly useless. For this reason it has been

decided to conduct a first experimental survey
based on driver interviews to establish if there are
statistically notable differences in the probabilities
of having a functioning mobile phone among
drivers of different o/d pairs and temporal intervals.

14

Estimation of probabilities p

>

. . .
Ml,miZaflO

orherYm
ordiKqcnces

need
a
close
cooperation
between
telecommunications experts and traffic engineers.
The analysis of methodologies applied to the
management and control of vehicular traffic can be
accomplished only with a good background in
dynamical assignment and real time traffic control.
The risk of over reaction or over-saturation as a
consequence of new control or informative policies
is always to be taken into account especially when
new technologies are applied for the first time on
the field.

Dynamic Traffic Assignment

Estimated
values of
P

_ _ _ _

ai

X. REFERENCES
[I]

[Z]

VIII. SOME EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF AN ITALIAN

SURVEY ON THE USE OF MOBILE PHONES ON BOARD

In this section some experimental results are

presented on a survey that has been focused on
establishing the use of mobile phones on vehicles.
The survey has been conducted in the months of
October and November by interviewing a sample of
the drivers that were entering or exiting 7 sites on
the perimeter line of a low income small city in the
south of Italy. The percentages obtained for the u?e
of cellular phones are not exactly the P od
probabilities, but are, anyway, good indicators of
the diffusion of mobile phones on vehicles. The
small survey has a modest importance as a sample
of the whole Italian vehicle population but is the
first one of this type conducted in Italy and has the
interesting result of showing the preliminary result
that the use of mobile phones on vehicles does not
depend on the driver o/d pair.
If this results is confirmed by further research, on
other sites, then the estimation of dynamic o/d
matrices will results greatly simplified.
Two analysis of variance (ANOVA) have been
conducted among the group of users coming from
different origins and among the group of users
going to different destinations. In both cases it has
been possible to establish that there is no statistical
difference among groups. The following values
have been obtained as an average of all the
interviews (and as an average of the single groups):
81% as the ratio of vehicles with mobile pkmes on
the total number of vehicles; 61% as the ratio of
vehicles with functioning mobile phones on the total
number of vehicles.

[3]

[4]

[SI

[6]
[7]
[XI

[9]
[IO]

[Ill

[I21
[I31
[14]

IX. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has been only a first presentation of
some the many possibilities offered by the use of
mobile phones in traffic management and control.
It is important to remind that all the new studies that
can bring advances in the above described fields

15

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