Passive Wi-Fi Monitoring in Public Transport: A case study in the Madeira Island

TL;DR

This study presents a low-cost passive Wi-Fi monitoring system deployed in Madeira Island's public transport to analyze passenger flow, optimize routes, and enhance sustainable mobility through data-driven insights.

Contribution

It introduces a novel embedded system for passive Wi-Fi data collection in public transport and demonstrates its effectiveness in monitoring and optimizing transit services.

Findings

Successful deployment in 19 vehicles with passive Wi-Fi probes

Effective estimation of passenger exits and peak loads

Enhanced route optimization and service management

Abstract

Transportation has become of evermore importance in the last years, affecting people's satisfaction and significantly impacting their quality of life. In this paper we present a low-cost infrastructure to collect passive Wi-Fi probes with the aim of monitoring, optimizing and personalizing public transport, towards a more sustainable mobility. We developed an embedded system deployed in 19 public transportation vehicles using passive Wi-Fi data. This data is analyzed on a per-vehicle and per-stop basis and compared against ground truth data (ticketing), while also using a method of estimating passenger exits, detecting peak loads on vehicles, and origin destination habits. As such, we argue that this data enables route optimization and provides local authorities and tourism boards with a tool to monitor and optimize the management of routes and transportation, identify and prevent accessibility issues, with the aim of improving the services offered to citizens and tourists, towards a more sustainable mobility.