A Fundamental Study of Understanding Travel Characteristics of Public Transport Ridership using Mobile Spatial Statistics

Abstract

In the recent years, the number of passengers of public transport in rural city is tends to be decreasing. Therefore public transport authorities and local government are investigating ridership promotion measures in several place. For example, Kochi city has been conducted public transport fare free measures for the bus and trams in the city. However, surveying for understandings travel characteristics during the public transport fare free measures could not conduct due to the lack of travel data. This paper tried to understand the change of public transport ridership using mobile spatial statistics data when the public transport fare free measures has been implemented. This paper defines the amount of public transport travel by simple way using mobile spatial statistics data though the comparison with number of passengers aggregated by smart card data in the study site. This paper describes the possibility of understanding the characteristics of public transport ridership during the public transport fare free measures based on the analysis of defined amount of public transport travel.