An analysis of the retention of public transport usage following fare discount measures using IC card data in the kochi city urban area

Abstract

In Kochi City, a fare discount program called the “One-Coin Day for Sundays and Holidays (10 Yen Day)” was implemented on Sundays, holidays, and during the year-end/New Year period from November 3, 2022, to January 29, 2023, to promote and encourage the continued use of public transportation. In this study, using approximately ten years of accumulated IC card data, users were classified into three groups— dormant, showing a tendency to withdraw, and others—based on their past public transport usage characteristics, and changes in their frequency of public transport use before and after the discount program were examined. Furthermore, users were sub-classified according to changes in their usage frequency, and their characteristics were analyzed in terms of temporal and spatial trip pattern dependence. As a result, it was found that users who had not used public transportation before the 10 Yen Day began to use it afterward, and traveled with varying temporal and spatial patterns on a daily basis.