Measuring Transit Performance using Smart Card Data

Smart card automated fare collection systems (SCAFC) for transit mainly have been considered for their administrative function of controlling the access to the service and for revenue management. However, the authors believe that data from these systems can also be used to describe both transport demand and supply. This paper will illustrate the use of smart card data to estimate various transit network performance measures. Combined to well-established evaluation processes, such measures could assist operators monitor in more details their network. The performance of the network supply (vehicle-kilometers, vehicle-hours, commercial speed, etc.) and the statistics on passenger service (passenger-kilometers, passenger-hours, average trip length, etc.) can be calculated from these datasets for any spatial and temporal levels of resolution.