Origin-destination demand prediction of public transit using graph convolutional neural network

The insight into origin–destination (OD) demand patterns aids transport planners in making the public transit system more efficient and attractive. This may encourage individuals to shift from private vehicles to public transit, easing the burden on traffic and its negative impacts. Hence, to know how OD demand is going to vary in future, a state-of-the-art OD demand prediction model needs to be developed. Previously, studies have developed zone-based prediction models which may not be appropriate for predicting OD demand within a route of public transit. Additionally, spatial correlations between the stops of public transit must be included in the model for improved forecasting accuracy. Hence, in an effort to fulfil these gaps, a Graph Convolutional Neural Network (GCN) is developed to forecast the OD demand of public bus transit with nodes being the bus stops and links between them representing the passenger flow between the stops. Land use around the bus stops is retrieved as a node feature and included in the model to account for the spatial correlation between the stops. The model is trained using a real-life dataset from the public bus service of Davangere city located in India. Land use around the bus stops is extracted from the Davangere city master plan, procured from the urban development authority. The developed model is compared with conventional models and the findings show that the GCN model performs better in terms of prediction accuracy than the baseline models. Additionally, at the stop level, the performance of the model remained stable due to the inclusion of land use data compared to conventional models where land use data was not considered.