Exploring Social Media Data for Travel Demand Analysis: A Comparison of Twitter, Household Travel Survey, and Synthetic Population Data in California

In this paper, the authors explore Twitter information as a potential source for travel demand estimation statewide. An inventory of geo-tagged tweets and Twitter trips are compared with the data from the California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) and a synthetically generated inventory of trip making using population synthesis with PopGen. The comparison uses spatial statistics and multivariate techniques that are appropriate for sparse data. Production of tweets vary systematically with social and demographic characteristics of places around the State of California but they also differ depending on synthetic travel. At the zonal level of comparison the authors find that tweets are generated more often from zones that generate more trips by bicycle, drive alone, and airplane presumably due to travel context and traveler characteristics. The comparison of Twitter inferred travel with the California Household Travel Survey shows similarities in trip lengths and spatial distributions and differences in trip durations. In addition, social media data do not capture differences between weekdays and weekends or major holidays.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ20 Standing Committee on Statewide Transportation Data and Information Systems.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Transportation Research Board

    500 Fifth Street, NW
    Washington, DC  United States  20001
  • Authors:
    • Lee, Jae Hyun
    • Davis, Adam
    • McBride, Elizabeth
    • Goulias, Konstadinos G
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2017

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 19p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01622538
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 17-00711
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Jan 17 2017 9:47AM