PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF BOARDING BEHAVIORS OF TRANSIT USERS: A CASE OF IZMIRS’S INTEGRATED FARE SYSTEM

Abstract

This paper contributes to an emerging literature on the application of smart card fare payment data in public transportation planning. While this data is not mainly aimed at planning purposes, it can provide very useful evidences on travel behavior variability over space and time. Consequently, the analysis of various groups’ behaviors in using a multi modal transit system a case Izmir city is evaluated. It argues a case for the potential of smartcard data in revealing a daily pattern especially using boarding information. In this study, 1,967,955 boarding data of 7 November 2018 in the smart card system of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality were analyzed. Analysis based on fare categories, type of boarding, number of daily boarding, and daily cost inquired by the various groups were estimated. The distribution of most users across all public transportation modes fits well with generalized extreme value distribution. These groups (adults, teachers and students) seem to be commuters and mostly active during the peak periods while the non-commuters tend to have a uniform boarding across time. The application of boarding information data can reveal important patterns, which is relevant to planners and policy makers.