City-wide examining transport network accessibility using taxi GPS data

Abstract

This study has developed a method to city-wide identify all regions with poor transport accessibility, using GPS data generated by taxis. This approach is composed of four major steps, including travel pattern modeling, accessibility measure building, region with poor accessibility detecting, and specific problem analyzing. Using GPS data collected from all taxis operating in the Chinese city of Harbin, the performance of this approach is tested. In total, 10 worst regions have been identified with accessibility measures reaching only 81.3% of the overall average across the city. A serious accessibility problem to filling stations has also been discovered, in which drivers from nearly 92.6% of the residential areas have to travel longer than 30 min to refill their vehicles. The experimental results demonstrate the potential and effectiveness of the proposed method in detecting accessibility problems and assisting policy makers in improving accessibility situations across the city.