ABSTRACT
A better understanding of travel patterns plays an important role in improving passenger experience and increasing ridership for public transport authorities. Although many studies have explored passenger travel patterns with smart card data, it is still unclear about how travel pattern variability relates to sociodemographic characteristics. This study addresses the limitation and examines the association between travel pattern variability and sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, ticket types) using the unique smart card data in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, which include not only one-year transaction information but also individual sociodemographic characteristics. An approach is developed to recognise temporal and spatial travel patterns, and entropy is used to characterise the variability of travel patterns. The results indicate that the majority of the frequent public transport users have regular spatiotemporal travel patterns. The travel pattern regularity varies by gender, age and ticket types. Male users travel more regularly in space and time than females. Users aged 65 years and over have more diverse and less regular travel patterns. Commuter pass holders have more regular travel patterns than non-pass holders, whereas the elderly monthly pass holders present the opposite characteristics.
