Abstract

Various technologies using wireless access points, camera recognition, transportation cards, and Bluetooth beacons have recently been proposed for use in measuring congestion in public transportation. However, existing methods have the problem of low measurement accuracy or providing congestion information in only four stages. Thus, this paper proposes a real-time passenger counting technology for streetcars that uses high sound frequency signals to solve these problems and counting passenger more accurately. Because high-frequency signals have a smaller signal transmission range than Bluetooth beacon, their use can solve the problem of misrecognition of people located outside the streetcar, and the number of passengers can be measured with the same level of accuracy as when using the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signal. To verify the performance of the proposed system, we conducted a comparative experiment with a BLE beacon-based system. The proposed method showed high accuracy and could thus be used immediately to measure real-time congestion in streetcars.