Understanding the integration of buses and metro systems using smart card data

Abstract. Buses are considered as an important type of feeder model for urban metro systems. It is important to understand the integration of buses and metro systems for promoting public transportation. Using smart card data generated by automatic fare collection systems, we aim at exploring the characteristics of bus-and-metro integration. Taking Shanghai as a case study, we first introduced a rule-based method to extract metro trips and bus-and-metro trips from the raw smart card records. Based on the identified trips, we conducted three analyses to explore the characteristics of bus-and-metro integration. The first analysis showed that 46% users have at least two times of using buses to access metro stations during five weekdays. By combining the ridership of metro and bus-and-metro, the second analysis examined how the share of buses as the feeder mode change across space and time. Results showed that the share of buses as the feeder mode in morning peak hours is much larger than in afternoon peak hours, and metro stations away from the city center tend to have a larger share. Pearson correlation test was employed in the third analysis to explore the factors associated with the ratios of bus-and-metro trips. The metro station density and access metro duration are positively associated with the ratios. The number of bus lines around 100 m to 400 m of metro stations all showed a negative association, and the coefficient for 200 m is the largest. In addition, the temporal differences of the coefficients also suggest the importance of a factor might change with respect to different times. These results enhanced our understanding of the integration of buses and metro systems.