Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Computers

A Suitable Approach for Evaluating Bus Arrival

Time Prediction Techniques in Egypt
M. Tantawy and M. Zorkany

announcements. Achieving these main features will cause

more improvement in public transport convenience and safety
in Egypt. It will also allow Central Rooms to manage better
their resources (mainly busses) through better route planning
in relation to peak hours & congested zones.
Most Bus arrival-time predilection algorithms depend on
Bus speed, traffic flow and occupancy and traffic incidents. In
recent researches, other factors and parameters entered in the
calculation of prediction time as daily, weekly and seasonal.
For instance, daily patterns distinguish morning hours, rush
hours and night traffic, while weekly patterns distinguish
weekday and weekend traffic, while seasonal patterns
distinguish school season and summer season.
In previous paper in the same project [1], online Bus
arrival time prediction using hybrid neural network and
Kalman filter techniques was proposed and tested depending
on simulation data . In this paper, we re-do this
implementation depending on real data of field test and
propose a suitable approach for evaluating Bus arrival time
predilection technique depending on a hybrid Neural Network
and Kalman filter Techniques in Egypt.
This paper is organized as follows. Field Test Scenario is
presented in Section 2. Testing proposed bus arrival time
prediction technique is presented in Section 3. Field test
results and discussions are given in Section 4 and finally
conclusions are drawn in Section 5.

AbstractAccurate Bus arrival time prediction depending on a

real-time basis has become an essential and important element in
management transportation systems. This paper demonstrates the
results of field tests for evaluating bus arrival time prediction in
Egypt. One of the most difficult aspects of evaluating an operational
field test is obtaining consumer response to products or services that
are not market ready or even completely functional. Field tests were
performed under real traffic situations in order to test the system in
terms of prediction of bus arrival time to stations depending on two
techniques consisting of Kalman filter and Neural Network. Findings
from the field test at the real-world sites indicated that the system
would be capable estimate the prediction time.
KeywordsIntelligent Transportation System (ITS), Neural
Network, Field test, Kalman Filter.
I. INTRODUCTION

ntelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are advanced

applications which aim to provide innovative services
relating to different modes of transport and traffic management
and enable various users to be better informed and make safer,
more coordinated, and 'smarter' use of transport networks.
Improving traffic flow, reducing emissions and
synchronizing traffic signals for safety and public
transportation vehicle priority are just a few of the benefits of
intelligent transportation systems. Intelligent traffic solutions
collect information at traffic signals all around the city,
correlate the real-time data and can automatically regulate
traffic policies across a city.
TMUA system is designed to interconnect public transport
vehicles and bus stations to Central Room to monitor the
vehicles & traffic status. Based on the collected data and via
analyzing road condition, accurate Bus arrival times will be
computed via processing server at the central room and
transmitted to all relevant stations. Passengers in buses will be
notified of the current station and the next station using audio

II. FIELD TEST SCENARIO

First, Field test scenario has been built to test TUMA
integrated system and test proposed bus arrival time
prediction. That scenario is carried out using different
components, each aiming at a specific function. Figure 1
shows the different Field test components: Three buses and
two servers (processing server & Data base server).
The available data, which was collected during more than
two months for units have been installed in three Busses of the
lines of NTI fleet (Our Institute) in different three routes
(about 18 stations). Taking into account that these lines in
different areas to cover different cases of traffic in Egypt.
In field test, five inputs are chosen to predict bus arrival
time:
Day: take values from 1 (Saturday) to 7 (Friday).
Station Index Link: links index between successive stations.
Period: each day is divided into five periods.

This work concern is a part of research project called Transportation

Management and User Awareness (TMUA) that research project is financially
supported by the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt.
Research project Team are: A. Ammar, E.M. Saad, I. Ashour, M.Tantawy,
M.zorkany, M.Shiple, A.Nabil, M.Sami and A.Hamdi.
M.Tantawy is with the Network Planning Department, National
Telecommunication Institute, Cairo, Egypt (e-mail: m.tantawy@ nti.sci.eg.)
M.Zorkany is with the Electronic Departement,
National
Telecommunication Institute, Cairo, Egypt; (e-mail: m.tantawy@ nti.sci.eg).

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Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Computers

layers ( single, double , three and four hidden layers) to choose

the most suitable design for our application.

Season: the year is divided in three categories: Ramadan,

School season and Vacation season.
Route: represent route number as 1,2,3...

B. Suitable Number of Hidden Layers NN

There are really two decisions that must be made regarding
the hidden layers of neural network, first, how many hidden
layers to actually have in the neural network ? and how many
neurons will be in each of these layers?.
Theoretically, Problem that requires fast implementation,
fast learning and easy implementation single hidden layer are
encountered. However, double hidden layer NN can represent
functions with any kind of shape. Two hidden layers NN is
also used in applications which need more accurate output and
off line learning application [10,11].
Also, Deciding the number of neurons in each hidden
layers is a very important to implement suitable neural network
for specific application. Because using few neurons will results
under- fitting problem and too large numbers of neurons will
results Over-fitting problems. Also, training time can increase
to the point that it is impossible to train the neural network.
The most famous rules for determining the number of
neurons in the hidden layers of NN are:
The number of hidden neurons between the size of the input
layer and output layer.
The number of hidden neurons 2/3 the size of the input
layer, plus output layer.
The number of hidden neurons less than twice the size of the
input layer.
Practically, it is very difficult to determine a good network
topology just from the number of inputs and outputs. It
depends critically on the number of training examples and the
complexity of the classification. So, for more accurate
decision, the following analysis are to choose the suitable
number of hidden layers neural network architecture in our
project.

Fig. 1 Main components of Field test

III. TESTING BUS ARRIVAL TIME PREDICTION TECHNIQUE

The ability to obtain accurate predictions of bus arrival
time on a real time basis is vital to both bus operations control
and passenger information systems. Several studies have been
devoted to this arrival time prediction problem in many
countries; however, few resulted in completely satisfactory
algorithms [2-9].
This paper presents an effective method that can be used to
predict the expected bus arrival time at individual bus stops
along a service route. This method is a hybrid scheme that
combines a neural network (NN) that infers decision rules
from historical data with Kalman Filter (KF) that fuses
prediction calculations with current GPS measurements. The
proposed algorithm relies on real-time location data and takes
into account historical travel times as well as temporal and
spatial variations of traffic conditions.

C. Selecting Suitable Neural Network Structure

In field test, to determine the prediction times of a moving
bus to the downstream bus stations, the GPS readings of each
equipped bus need to be projected onto the underlying transit
network.
The proposed neural network consist of five input, and
output layer. The Input Layer of the proposed neural network
has 5 nodes (Day, Station Index Link, Period, Season and
Route) and one output node represent bus arrival time
prediction. The different neural network structures (single,
double, three and four hidden layers) is studied through
number of real time collected data for three different routes
consisting of 18 stations (6 stations per route) during more
than two months.
To select suitable number of hidden layers in neural
network structure in our project, we used real data to training
and simulations the different number of neural network (single,
double, three and four hidden layers) to predict bus arrival

A. Neural Network Implementation

In previous paper in the same project [1], double hidden
layer Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) Neural Network (NN)
was suggested depending on simulated data using MATLAB
simulation. In this paper, re-do this implementation depending
on real data of field test. And using different number of hidden

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Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Computers

times. The MSE (Mean Square Error) and processing time

were calculated for each case.
The results of MSE shown in Table 1 and Fig. 2 which
indicate the MSE of single hidden layer is large (34.53), then
the value decreased to 31.65 for double hidden layers and the
MSE value minor decrease in case of three and four hidden
layers.
The results of processing time (training time) shown in
Table 2 and Fig. 3 which indicate the training time of single
hidden layer is small (13 minutes), then the time increased to
16 minutes in double hidden layers and then increase in case of
three and four hidden layers.

Fig. 3 : Relation between learning processing time and No of

hidden layers NN

TABLE 1 : Relation between MSE and No of hidden

layers
No of hidden
layer

MSE (Mean Square

Error)

34.53

31.65

31.18

31.43

From the previous results, the double hidden layer neural

network is suggested for prediction bus arrival time since MSE
error of double hidden layer is better than single hidden layer
and the improvement using three and four hidden layers are
minor while increasing number of hidden layers increase the
training processing time exponentially. Figure 4 shows the
proposed neural network structure.

Fig. 2 : Relation between MSE and No of hidden layers

Fig. 4: The proposed neural network structure

TABLE 2 : Relation between learning processing time

and No of hidden layers NN
No of hidden layer

Processing time (minute)

13

16

20

26

ISBN: 978-1-61804-215-6

Testing the proposed structure (double hidden layer) with

single hidden layer neural network structure based on the
collected real data of field test to show the quality of proposed
structure in bus arrival time predictions shown in figure 5. this
comparison based on Matlab simulation. The results shows
advantage of double hidden layers structure in prediction.
In figure 5, the X-Axis represent Station Index Link in
different trips and different periods in different days. and YAxis represent the real time (blue) and predictions times using
single hidden layer (red) and double hidden layer neural
network (green).

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Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Computers

Fig. 5 : Comparison between single and double hidden layer

B. Arrival time prediction testing using Kalman Filter

IV. FIELD TEST RESULTS

Arrival time prediction using Kalman Filter prediction

algorithm is described in previous paper [1] to estimate bus
arrival time. Calculations arrival time using Kalman filter in
the proposed system depends on the four previous real time
collected data for the same route and link. For example: figure
8 shows arrival time calculation result from NTI to Kobry AlKoba station using Kalman Filter (distance about 9
Kilometers).

A. Bus Arrival Time Prediction Testing using NN:

Figure 6 shows a comparison between real arrival time and
prediction time using neutral network for Kobry Al-Koba
station and El-Sawah station (distance about 4 Kilometers).
The RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) in this case equal 1.2
minute.

Fig..6: Real Arrival Time and Prediction Time Using NN

for Kobry Al-Koba and El-Sawah station

Fig. 8 Arrival Time Prediction between two stations using KF

Figure 7 shows a comparison between real arrival time and

prediction time using neutral network for NTI station to Kobry
Al-Koba station (distance about 9 Kilometers).

C. Comparison Between Neural Network and Kalman Filter

The analysis of the field data has been made for 12 inbetween stations distance (index). A comparison between
arrival time prediction algorithms (Kalman Filter and neural
network) is summarized in Table 3 and figure 9 depending on
RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) value.
Table 3 and figure 9 show that, RMSE value in case of
using neural network to predict bus arrival time is better than
using Kalman filter in about 10 station indexes. The quality
results of neural network change from 0.5 minute to 5 minutes.
Kalman filter is better in only two station indexes (index
number 9 and number 10). but by small value not more than
0.6 minute.

Fig. 7: Real Arrival Time and Prediction Time Using NN

for NTI to Kobry Al-Koba station

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Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Computers

TABLE 3. Comparison Between NN and KF

Station Index

KF
9.1

NN
6.8

1.69

1.28

5.61

3.23

3.26

2.61

8.28

5.37

4.01

3.08

2.65

1.96

10.17

6.63

1.23

1.47

10

0.99

1.56

11

1.97

1.5

12

2.33

1.91

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work concern is a part of research project called
Transportation Management and User Awareness (TMUA)
that research project is financially supported by the National
Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt.
Research project Team are: A. Ammar, E.M. Saad, I.
Ashour, M.Tantawy, M.zorkany, M.Shiple, A.Nabil, M.Sami
and A.Hamdi.
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[1] M. Zaki, I. Ashour, M.zorkany, B. Hesham,"Online Bus Arrival Time
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A. Shalaby and A. Farhan, "Bus Travel Time Prediction for Dynamic

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[3] S.I.1. Chien, Y.Q. Ding and C.H. Wei, "Dynamic Bus Arrival Time
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[6] S. Suwardo, M. Napiah, I. Kamaruddin and O. Wahyunggoro, "Bus travel
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Fig. 9 : RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) for NN & KF

From the field test results using NTI fleet (low trip rate), it
can be noted that calculating the arrival time using neural
network algorithm gives us better results than Kalman filter
algorithm in most different conditions. Nerveless Kalman filter
has show negligible improvement than neural network
algorithm in two stations under test. In case of heavy daily trip
rates the kalman filter algorithm shows better results.

[8] R.P.S. Padmanaban1 K. Divakar1 L. Vanajakshi1 S.C. Subramanian2,

"Development of a real-time bus arrival prediction system for Indian
traffic conditions," Intelligent Transport Systems, IET, Vol. 4 , Issue:
3, ISSN : 1751-956X, pp: 189 - 200, 2009.
[9] Rocco Zito, Hong-En Lin, "a review of travel-time prediction in transport
and logistices," Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for
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[10] B. Karlik and A. Vehbi, "Performance analysis of various activation
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V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the results of field tests for Evaluating Bus
Arrival Time Prediction in Egypt is proposed. Field test were
performed under real traffic situations in order to test the
proposed algorithms in terms of prediction of bus arrival time
to stations depending on two techniques Kalman filter and
Neural Network. The system was tested using NTI fleet for a
field test. In the field test "at low trip rates", the arrival time
calculation algorithms that were proposed in this system shows
an advantage of the neutral network algorithm over kalman
filter one in most cases. The kalman filter algorithm can give
advantage in case of heavy daily trip rates.
ISBN: 978-1-61804-215-6

[11] Saurabh Karsoliya," Approximating Number of Hidden layer neurons

in Multiple Hidden Layer BPNN Architecture", International Journal of
Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume 3, Issue6- 2012.

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