Data-Driven Method for Passenger Path Choice Inference in Congested Subway Network

In a congested large-scale subway network, the distribution of passenger flow in space-time dimension is very complex. Accurate estimation of passenger path choice is very important to understand the passenger flow distribution and even improve the operation service level. The availability of automated fare collection (AFC) data, timetable, and network topology data opens up a new opportunity to study this topic based on multisource data. A probability model is proposed in this study to calculate the individual passenger’s path choice with multisource data, in which the impact of the network time-varying state (e.g., path travel time) on passenger path choice is fully considered. First, according to the number and characteristics of OD (origin-destination) candidate paths, the AFC data among special kinds of OD are selected to estimate the distribution of passengers’ walking time and waiting time of each platform. Then, based on the composition of path travel time, its real-time probability distribution is formulated with the distribution of walking time, waiting time, and in-vehicle time as parameters. Finally, a membership function is introduced to evaluate the dependence between passenger’s travel time and the real-time travel time distribution of each candidate path and take the path with the largest membership degree as passenger’s choice. Finally, a case study with Beijing Subway data is applied to verify the effectiveness of the model presented in this study. We have compared and analysed the path calculation results in which the time-varying characteristics of network state are considered or not. The results indicate that a passenger’s path choice behavior is affected by the network time-varying state, and our model can quantify the time-varying state and its impact on passenger path choice.