The Across Latitudes and Cultures BRT Centre of Excellence invites to its monthly webinar series to share timely public transit research and encourage ongoing collaboration. Our August webinar was:
Using smart card and GPS data for policy and planning: the case of Transantiago
Presented by Marcela A. Munizaga of the Department of Civil Engineering of Universidad de Chile, and Vicepresident of the Chilean Transport Engineering Society.
Thursday, August 28th at 12:30 Eastern Daily Time (Boston or Santiago)
See summary and presentation below.
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The introduction of a new public transport system in Santiago, Chile, in 2007 brought to us an unexpected gift: the availability of what we now call BIG DATA; massive amounts of passive data obtained from the technological devices installed to control the operation of buses and to administer the fare collection process. Many other cities in the world have been experiencing the same, and sooner or later, this is likely to happen everywhere. Many researchers have seen this as an opportunity, and have developed tools to obtain valuable information from the available data. However, the case of Transantiago is particularly advantageous, because since 2007 all buses are equipped with gps devices that generate a position record every 30s and a smartcard card called bip! is the only payment option available at buses, and by far the most popular in Metro, implying an overall 97% penetration rate. This presentation will include a brief description of the Transantiago public transport system, a description of the methods we have developed to obtain valuable information from the data available: public transport trips origin-destination matrices, speed profiles of buses, service quality indicators, time use patterns. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of what else can be obtained from this data and how it can change the way we do transport planning.
Please email Omar at oibarrar@uc.cl with any questions or future topic suggestions. The series is open to anyone and will address issues relevant to researchers and practitioners. Please share this announcement with your extended network.
