Using Wi-Fi Connection Data to Analyze Performance of the Subway System in Toronto, Canada

Typical performance measurements of public transit operations make use of vehicle-based data such as automated vehicle location data or passenger-based data at specific fare collection points. Ideally, the performance of a transit system from a reliability perspective and according to passenger experience should be measured through individual passenger journeys. The growing prevalence of smartphones provides one potential source for this analysis, because passive data collection methods such as obtaining Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth connection data allow us to observe devices as they move throughout the system. In this study we present a collection of methods and performance measures for using Wi-Fi connection data to measure various aspects of customer experience and reliability, including methods for detecting train arrivals at platforms, estimating wait times, measuring origin–destination travel time variation, and developing profiles of various journey types for comparison. In contrast with many other advances toward passenger-based measures, these methods do not require the combination of diverse data sets to generate useful results. These methods are applied to data from the Wi-Fi service in the subway system in Toronto, Canada.