Analysis of Spatial-Temporal Characteristics of Operations in Public Transport Networks Based on Multisource Data

Abstract

Operational efficiency and stability are two critical aspects to measure bus systems. Influenced by many stochastic factors, buses always suffer from delay and bunching. Traditional studies focus on a single route and lack research on the systematic evaluation of bus network. In this paper, we propose a data-driven framework to analyze the efficiency and stability based on small granularity GPS trajectory data from the perspective of entire bus network. The IC card data and route data are used to extract the boarding passenger number and topological structure, respectively. The results show that the average headway of stations follows a lognormal distribution. Moreover, the distribution of arrival efficiency of stations is inhomogeneous and a small number of stations have large values. In addition, the relationships among average headway of stations, boarding passenger number, bus number, and complex network indicators are revealed. It is found that the average headway of station is negatively correlated with other indicators, which implies that complex network connections and more passenger flows could weaken the efficiency of bus operations. This paper provides a way to evaluate the operational performance of bus networks and could give help for monitoring and optimizing the daily operation of bus systems.