The use of mobile phones in traffic management and control

In this paper some of the new possibilities in monitoring traffic and in deploying new control strategies with the use of mobile phones localization data are discussed. The possibilities open to these new applications are enormous given: the extraordinary diffusion of mobile phones; the new technological developments in the field of mobile phone data transmission; The implementation of E-911 in USA and the potential economic interest of mobile phone producers and mobile phone network operators towards mobile phone localization systems. Mobile phone based toll collection is discussed and a new traffic monitoring system is introduced that can produce estimates for dynamic old matrices and the evaluation of travel times. The idea of the system (which is covered in Italy by an industrial patent), is to use all the localization data that the mobile network operators already have to obtain estimates of o/d traffic matrices. The methodology is analyzed in order to establish statistical properties and calibration methodologies.