Generating demand responsive bus routes from social network data analysis. (July 2021) - Sala, Lidia
Highlights: Uses data from Twitter to enhance predictions of demand to attend a music festival. Shown to be particularly beneficial at identifying demands in more rural areas. Leads to design and delivery of commercially viable bus services to the event. 11 new commercial bus services transported 450 attendees from peri-urban/rural areas. Abstract: Many European cities are establishing mandatory obligations for large mobility demand generators such as business and retail parks, tourist sites and events to develop Mobility Management Plans (MMP). Developing MMPs for events with uncertain spatial demand is a particular challenge. This paper investigates whether reliable demand data can be extracted from mining social network (Twitter) content and using the resulting information to inform the design of commercially viable bus routes from peri-urban areas of Barcelona to a large music event (Canet Rock). Using data from relevant Twitter users, a Twitter influence score was established for each of the 947 municipalities in the Barcelona Region, providing a spatially distributed picture of the demand to attend the event, prior to event ticket purchase. This was used as the basis for planning and delivering 11 new commercially viable event bus routes transporting over 450 additional passengers from peri-urban and more rural areas in the Barcelona Region. This paper demonstrates that the innovation of information mining from Social Networks can provide better comprehension of the demand to support Mobility Management Planning for large events and can radically improve the ability of bus services to serve demand from peri-urban and rural areas.