Floating Car Data systems (Floating Cellular Data, Global Positioning System etc.) provide a new method to determine speeds and travel times on road networks. Currently, some companies collect this kind of data and commercialize its, such as TomTom (GPS) or Orange (GSM) groups. TomTom gives the opportunity to access its GPS historical dataset, through two main applications: Custom Travel Times (CTT) and Custom Area Analysis (CAA). The authors have studied the possibilities and limits of these historical tools for a potential use by various transport stakeholders, through different applications cases and ex-post evaluation. Their study shows that these tools provide a real added value and considerable time saving on several fields of expertise (accessibility, transport demand modeling, economic evaluation etc.). New methods using GPS data seem to be complementary to traditional tools (electromagnetic counting stations especially) and can provide an alternative solution to current issues related to traffic knowledge. They provide necessary and sufficient conditions for maximizing the potential of TomTom applications and a gain in reliability of its output data. (Author/publisher)
Abstract