Comparing Accessibility in Urban Slums Using Smart Card and Bus GPS Data

Providing reliable transportation to jobs for urban slums residents represents a development challenge for cities. This paper aims to compare five main urban slums in São Paulo megacity using smart card and bus GPS data to characterize how these communities are struggling to access job opportunities in the city. Information from passive data collection systems was used to better understand users work trips destinations, their travel time, and its reliability. The trip was classified as a work trip if a time difference of at least 7 hours between boardings was detected. For travel time calculations, GPS data of more than 14,000 vehicles was analyzed to recreate the GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) database with observed travel time information. ArcGIS Network Analyst was used to extract a travel time matrix for São Paulo. The results showed that the two slums closer to the city center are in fact better off than those located near municipality limits, when revealed travel times are taken into consideration. Despite presenting the same income levels, the three slums located further spent more time on average to reach their jobs. Nonetheless, GPS bus data (20 business days) revealed that one central slum is subject to higher unreliability of travel times of their main bus routes when compared to the other four slums.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE90 Standing Committee on Transportation in the Developing Countries.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Arbex, Renato Oliveira
  • Alves, Bianca Bianchi
  • Giannotti, Mariana Abrantes
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Bus transit; Employment; Global Positioning System; Low income groups; Reliability; Smart cards; Urban areas
• Geographic Terms: Sao Paulo (Brazil)
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01590916
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-5614
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 24 2016 5:07PM