Use of Mobile Device Wireless Signals to Determine Transit Route-Level Passenger Origin–Destination Flows: Methodology and Empirical Evaluation

Abstract

Directly observing stop-to-stop origin–destination (O-D) flows for transit passengers by onboard surveys is time-consuming and costly. While the use of automatic passenger count (APC) and automatic fare collection data to infer transit O-D flows has undergone important developments lately, the value of directly observing O-D movements remains of interest in light of inference errors. The increasing use of personal mobile devices and the corresponding reliance on wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) communications in public spaces allow for the prospect of using the detected anonymous Wi-Fi signals of mobile devices carried by transit passengers to extract O-D movements. An empirical study is conducted when O-D movements determined directly from Wi-Fi signal data and from a combination of Wi-Fi and APC data are compared to extensive, directly observed high-fidelity ground truth data obtained from an onboard survey. While O-D flows determined directly from the Wi-Fi data for a specific bus trip do not correspond well to the ground truth flows, the results demonstrate the promise of using Wi-Fi signal data for O-D flow determination when the data are aggregated across multiple bus trips for a time-of-day period, especially when used in conjunction with APC data.