Analysis of traffic status using on-line traffic maps and real-time information of parking spaces

The available parking spaces and traffic congestion level is found to be interrelated due to the vehicles' so-called cruising for parking spaces. In this paper, we are interested in analyzing the correlation between available public parking spaces and the traffic status near the corresponding parking facilities, by using the real time information of parking spaces, provided by the Macao Government and the real-time traffic status from an on-line traffic map provider. Using the correlation, if it exists, we can predict the traffic status near the parking facility by simply using the on-line information of parking spaces. The correlations found can also be used for better road planning. A real-time traffic analysis system is proposed to perform the correlation analysis, using the on-line traffic maps and the real-time information of available parking spaces from the government website. Background subtraction, histogram and adaptive thresholding are used to identify the color of the traffic lines from an on-line map, which are mapped to numerical congestion level for correlation analysis. From the experimental results, we found that the correlations between the available parking spaces and the congestion levels nearby depend not only on the locations of the facilities but also on the use of the parking facilities by the drivers.