Bus passenger origin-destination estimation and travel behavior using automated data collection systems in London, UK

This research explores the application of archived data from Automatic Data Collection Systems (ADCS) to transportation planning with a focus on bus passenger Origin-Destination (OD) inferences at the bus-route level and on travel behavior, using London as an example. This research demonstrates the feasibility and ease of applying the trip-chaining method to infer bus passengers' boarding and alighting locations, and validates the results by comparing them with the Bus Passenger Origin and Destination (BODS) survey data in London. With the inferred OD matrices, the variations of weekday and weekend bus route OD patterns over a two-week period are examined for planning purposes. Given these variations, reliance on ADCS can provide transit planners with more comprehensive, reliable and correct information for service planning than traditional manual surveys. Moreover, while interchange conditions and performance are considered important inputs for public transit planning, collecting such data has not been easy. Based on the inferred OD matrices and the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) data, alighting times for bus passengers can also be estimated. As a result, bus journey stages can easily be linked to form complete journeys based on the difference between the subsequent trip's boarding time and the previous trip's alighting time for each bus passenger. By comparing the interchange time and the connecting bus route's headway, this research also provides a way to evaluate connecting bus services and bus passengers' interchange patterns. Finally, this research can be expanded to the full bus network and other travel modes, opening the door to developing more comprehensive data bases for use in intermodal network planning.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Wei, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nigel H.M. Wilson and John P. Attanucci.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/60814

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/60814