Scrutinizing Weekly Travel Behavior Patterns in Paratransit: Results of a Big Data Experiment

Extracting structured knowledge from large datasets is a challenge that transportation planning faces more and more, particularly in the context of assisting policy decision-making. This paper takes advantage of the availability of 'BIG' operational archived data to scrutinize weekly travel variability of paratransit users and extract representative patterns of weekly travel behaviour. To that end, data mining techniques are used. The study is based on a one-year dataset which represents 1,393,291 trips made by 10,182 users. Empirical results show that the week structure regulates the activity rhythms of the paratransit system with more than 92% of successive daily trip chains performed inside a seven-day period. This study also confirms that weekly rhythms of paratransit are different from the weekly rhythms of the general population. In the future, paratransit planning should move towards a more data- and user-oriented paradigm if it intends to achieve an allocation of operational resources more commensurate with its ridership.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP060 Paratransit.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Desharnais, Marie-Christine
  • Chapleau, Robert
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
• Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data mining; Decision making; Paratransit services; Policy making; Ridership; Transportation planning; Travel behavior; Trip chaining; Weekly
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01479246
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 13-3790
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 24 2013 9:51AM