Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) Systems are being introduced increasingly in many
major cities around the world to improve the efficiency of our road-based passenger transport
systems. Satellite-based location and communication systems, particularly the Global
Positioning System (GPS) have been the platform for AVL systems which are now supporting
real-time passenger information (RTPI), fleet management and operations (FMOs) and
public transport priorities (PTPs), to name three key applications. The process of real-time
on-board bus location can result in a substantial database where the progress of the bus is
stored typically on a second-by-second basis. This is necessary for the primary real-time
applications such as those listed above (e.g. RTPI, FMO and PTP). In addition, it is clear that
such data could have an array of ‘secondary’ purposes, including use off-line for improving
scheduling efficiency and for automatic performance monitoring, thus reducing or removing
the need for manual on-street surveys. This paper looks at these and other innovative
uses of AVL data for public transport, taking the recent iBus system in London as a current
example of a modern AVL/GPS application in a capital city. It describes the data architecture
and management in iBus and then illustrates two further examples of secondary data
use – dwell time estimation and bus performance analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion
of some key data m