Multi-Step Subway Passenger Flow Prediction under Large Events Using Website Data

An accurate and reliable forecasting method of the subway passenger flow provides the operators with more valuable reference to make decisions, especially in reducing energy consumption and controlling potential risks. However, due to the non-recurrence and inconsistency of large events (such as sports games, concerts or urban marathons), predicting passenger flow under large events has become a very challenging task. This paper proposes a method for extracting event-related information from websites and constructing a multi-step station-level passenger flow prediction model called DeepSPE (Deep Learning for Subway Passenger Flow Forecasting under Events). Experiments on the actual data set of the Beijing subway prove the superiority of the model and the effectiveness of website data in subway passenger flow forecasting under events

Representation Learning of public transport data. Application to event detection

5th International Workshop and Symposium TransitData 2019, Paris, France, 08-/07/2019 - 10/07/2019On the basis of data collected by counting sensors deployed on trains, this paper deals with a forecasting of passenger load in public transport taking into account train operation. Providing passengers with train load forecasting, in addition to the expected arrival time of the next train, can indeed be useful for a better planning of their journeys, which can prevent over-crowding situations in the trains [6] [7]. The proposed approach is built on both a hierarchy of recurrent neural networks [8] and representation learning [9] with the aim to explore the ability of such mobility data processing to simultaneously perform a forecasting task and highlight the impact of events on the public transport operation and demand. An event refers here to an unexpected passenger transport activity or to a modification in transport operation compared to those corresponding to normal conditions. Two kind of historical data are used, namely train load data and automatic vehicle location (AVL) data. This latter source contains all information related to the train operation (delay, time of arrival/departure of vehicles ...). The proposed methodology is applied on a railway transit network line operated by the French railway company SNCF in the suburban of Paris. The historical dataset used in the experiments covers the period from 2015 to 2016

Benchmarking Travel Time and Demand Prediction Methods Using Large-scale Metro Smart Card Data

Urban mass transit systems generate large volumes of data via automated systems established for ticketing, signalling, and other operational processes. This study is motivated by the observation that despite the availability of sophisticated quantitative methods, most public transport operators are constrained in exploiting the information their datasets contain. This paper intends to address this gap in the context of real-time demand and travel time prediction with smart card data. We comparatively benchmark the predictive performance of four quantitative prediction methods: multivariate linear regression (MVLR) and semiparametric regression (SPR) widely used in the econometric literature, and random forest regression (RFR) and support vector machine regression (SVMR) from machine learning. We find that the SVMR and RFR methods are the most accurate in travel flow and travel time prediction, respectively. However, we also find that the SPR technique offers lower computation time at the expense of minor inefficiency in predictive power in comparison with the two machine learning methods

Metro Passenger Flow Forecast with a Novel Markov-Grey Model

Accurate forecasts of passenger flow entering and leaving metro stations is an important work for Metro operation management, such as for the automatic adjustment of train operation diagrams or station passenger crowd regulation planning measures. In this study, Grey theory is introduced to develop a time series GM (1, 1) model for total passenger forecasting. Two modification factors determined by two minimum mean square error principles are proposed to decrease the discreteness of input data and thus improve the forecast accuracy. Moreover, the Markov chain approach is further used to optimize the residual error series. Passenger flow data entering and leaving the Xiaozhai station of Xi'an Metro Line 2 from September 1-30, 2015, were utilized to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method; the forecast results show that this novel Markov-Grey model performs well in terms of forecast accuracy with smaller SMSE and MAPE values. To this effect, the proposed method is especially well-suited to smooth passenger flow forecasting compared to other forecast techniques

Passenger Flows in Underground Railway Stations and Platforms, MTI Report 12-43

Urban rail systems are designed to carry large volumes of people into and out of major activity centers. As a result, the stations at these major activity centers are often crowded with boarding and alighting passengers, resulting in passenger inconvenience, delays, and at times danger. This study examines the planning and analysis of station passenger queuing and flows to offer rail transit station designers and transit system operators guidance on how to best accommodate and manage their rail passengers. The objectives of the study are to: 1) Understand the particular infrastructural, operational, behavioral, and spatial factors that affect and may constrain passenger queuing and flows in different types of rail transit stations; 2) Identify, compare, and evaluate practices for efficient, expedient, and safe passenger flows in different types of station environments and during typical (rush hour) and atypical (evacuations, station maintenance/ refurbishment) situations; and 3) Compile short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations for optimizing passenger flows in different station environments

CROWDSOURCED DATA FOR MOBILITY ANALYSIS

The importance of data in transportation research has been widely recognized since it plays a crucial role in understanding and analyzing the movement of people, identifying inefficiencies in transportation systems, and developing strategies to improve mobility services. This use of data, known as mobility analysis, involves collecting and analyzing data on transport infrastructure and services, traffic flows, demand, and travel behavior. However, traditional data sources have limitations. The widespread use of mobile devices, such as smartphones, has enabled the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to improve data sources for mobility analysis. Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) is a paradigm that uses data from smart devices to provide researchers with more detailed and real-time insights into mobility patterns and behaviors. However, this new data also poses challenges, such as the need to fuse it with other types of information to obtain mobility insights. In this thesis, the primary source of data that is being examined and leveraged is the popularity index of local businesses and points of interest from Google Popular Times (GPT) data. This data has significant potential for mobility analysis as it overcomes limitations of traditional mobility data, such as data availability and lack of reflection of demand for secondary activities. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate how crowdsourced data can contribute to reduce the limitations of traditional mobility datasets. This is achieved by developing new tools and methodologies to utilize crowdsourced data in mobility analysis. The thesis first examines the potential of GPT as a source to provide information on the attractiveness of secondary activities. A data-driven approach is used to identify features that impact the popularity of local businesses and classify their attractiveness based on these features. Secondly, the thesis evaluates the possible use of GPT as a source to estimate mobility patterns. A tool is created to use the crowdness of a station to estimate transit demand information and map the precise volume and temporal dynamics of entrances and exits at the station level. Thirdly, the thesis investigates the possibility of leveraging the popularity of activities around stations to estimate flows in and out of stations. A method is proposed to profile stations based on the dynamic information of activities in catchment areas. Through this data, machine learning techniques are used to estimate transit flows at the station level. Finally, this study concludes by exploring the possibility of exploiting crowdsourced data not only for extracting mobility insights under normal conditions but also to extract mobility trends during anomalous events. To this end, we focused on analyzing the recovery of mobility during the first outbreak of COVID-19 for different cities in Europe