The various uses of floating car data

To a large extent, traffic control and traffic information services depend on accurate information about the situation on the road network. Often rough estimates of queue lengths are no longer sufficient to give a reasonable prediction of travel times. Traditionally the situation on the road network is derived from local measurements (e.g. induction loops). It is difficult to obtain travel time estimates from local speed and flow data. It is especially difficult in urban areas. When the positions of a sufficient number of vehicles can be frequently communicated to a central site, travel times can be directly measured. This is called floating car data (FCD). This paper gives the major results of the Prelude trial and the ways in which FCD can be used. The Prelude FCD-trial in the Netherlands had as its primary aim to investigate the technical feasibility of using FCD to accurately measure travel times in a mixed urban and motorway network. FCD has a broad range of applications. The applications range from real time data for traffic management to the compilation of very accurate origin-destination matrices complete with travel times