Bus Load Factor Analysis Based on Smart Card Data and Survey Data

Public transit is the main travel mode for residents. With the development of city, the travel demand is increasing faster than the bus service supply. The bus becomes increasingly crowded. The bus load factor could be a key indicator of balance between supply and demand. In this paper, the coupling relationship is constructed between the load factor calculated based on smart card data and the crowding degree perceived by passenger from the survey data. And the crowding threshold can be accordingly obtained. Then, an evaluation system based on smart card data is proposed, the system consists of five indexes: the time unbalance coefficient, the reliability coefficient, the convenience coefficient, the spatial unbalance coefficient and the directional unbalance coefficient. The time-space distribution and reliability of bus load factor can be analyzed through the evaluation system. Taking three bus lines in Beijing as the case study, the results of the index analysis are consistent with passengers' subjective perception obtained from the survey data. According to smart card data, line 694 has the lowest convenience coefficient, which is accordance with the results obtained from survey data. According to the survey data, the passengers convenience rating of this line is also significantly lower than the other lines. The peak load factor and the spatial unbalance coefficient of line 465 are higher than those of line 694, and the reliability is better than line 694. Passengers have a higher comfort rating on the line 465 than on the line 694. The results show that the established evaluation system can quantitatively evaluate the distribution characteristics of load factor, and verify that load factor reliability will have an impact on the passenger perception of crowding.