Ridership Evaluation and Prediction in Public Transport by Processing Smart Card Data:A Dutch Approach and Example

This chapter deals with the Dutch smart card system, the so-called OV-Chipkaart and illustrates a potential application of its data. This chapter explores options for using this anonymous smart card data for evaluation, analysis and performing simple what-if analyses by using transport planning software. The objective is to process the data in such a way that it enhances evaluation and prediction of ridership (patterns). This helps to improve network and time-table design. The main contribution of this research is to introduce smart card as a data source into existing methods to come to a new ridership prediction approach. Our approach takes comfort into account, since it is a relevant quality indicator, which is often neglected. We show that the effect of a frequency increase in a congested public transport line in terms of additional passengers becomes significantly larger when comfort effects are included. Our approach was applied as a case study to the tram network in The Hague. The approach proved very valuable to gain insights on the effect of changes in the public transport supply.