Designing Automated Vehicle Location Systems for Archived Data Analysis

Automatic vehicle location (AVL) and other automated data collection systems can provide a rich and extensive database that can be analyzed to improve transit management and performance. In the past, many such systems have failed to provide a good data archive, while others have had success. Through the use of an extensive survey and in-depth case stud­ ies of nine transit agencies, the key issues in system design that help deter­ mine whether a data collection system will provide the useful data archive that many agencies desire are examined. In issues related to design of the data collection system itself, the focus is on five different lev­ els of spatial detail. Issues related to database design are also discussed, as are organizational issues.