Exploring Potential Travel Demand of Customized Bus Using Smartcard Data*

Customized bus (CB) is an innovation mode of public transportation (PT) system to alleviate the traffic congestion. As a demand-based transport, CB holds promise to provide personalized service by aggregating travel demand of individuals. However, the data collected through online surveys are limited and unreliable for the CB operation planning. This paper introduces a methodology to investigate the potential travel demands of CB based on smartcard data (SCD). The methodology proposed here consists of three processes: trip chain generation, origin-destination (OD) recognition and travel mode comparison. Drawing on Beijing as the case study, the smartcard dataset is processed for analyzing the spatial-temporal properties of passenger travel behavior and exploring potential travel demand of CB. The results indicate that the data have a workplace-oriented pattern and CB is suitable for passengers with long trip distances (beyond 8 km). These findings advance key points to future CB operation as it is associated with the route design and vehicle arrangement.