abstract

What Public Transit API Logs Tell Us about Travel Flows

Authors:

Pieter Colpaert,

Ruben Verborgh,

Rik Van de Walle,

Andrew Vande MoereAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '16 Companion: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web

Pages 873 - 878

https://doi.org/10.1145/2872518.2891069

Published: 11 April 2016 Publication History

Abstract

In the field of smart cities, researchers need an indication of how people move in and between cities. Yet, getting statistics of travel flows within public transit systems has proven to be troublesome. In order to get an indication of public transit travel flows in Belgium, we analyzed the query logs of the iRail API, a highly expressive route planning API for the Belgian railways. We were able to study 100k to 500k requests for each month between October 2012 and November 2015, which is between 0.56% and 1.66% of the amount of monthly passengers. Using data visualizations, we illustrate the commuting patterns in Belgium and confirm that Brussels, the capital, acts as a central hub. The Flemish region appears to be polycentric, while in the Walloon region, everything converges on Brussels. The findings correspond to the real travel demand, according to experts of the passenger federation Trein Tram Bus. We conclude that query logs of route planners are of high importance in getting an indication of travel flows. However, better travel intentions would be acquirable using dedicated HTTP POST requests.

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Cited By

Keller CGlück FGerlach CSchlegel T(2022)Investigating the Potential of Data Science Methods for Sustainable Public TransportSustainability10.3390/su1407421114:7(4211)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074211
Taelman RColpaert PMannens EVerborgh RNgonga Ngomo AFundulaki IKrithara A(2019)Generating public transport data based on population distributions for RDF benchmarkingSemantic Web10.3233/SW-18031910:2(305-328)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3233/SW-180319
Meegahapola LKandappu TJayarajah KAkoglu LXiang SMisra ASong JKim MLane NBalan R(2019)BuScopeProceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3307334.3326091(41-53)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307334.3326091
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

What Public Transit API Logs Tell Us about Travel Flows
1. Information systems
  1. World Wide Web
    1. Web mining
      1. Traffic analysis
      2. Web log analysis

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cover image ACM Other conferences

WWW '16 Companion: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web

April 2016

1094 pages

ISBN:9781450341448

General Chairs:
Jacqueline Bourdeau
Tele-university (TELUQ), Montreal, QC, Canada
,
Jim A. Hendler
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA
,
Roger Nkambou Nkambou
Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Ian Horrocks
University of Oxford, UK
,
Ben Y. Zhao
University of California at Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Copyright © 2016 Copyright is held by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2).

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IW3C2: International World Wide Web Conference Committee

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee

Republic and Canton of Geneva, Switzerland

Publication History

Published: 11 April 2016

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WWW '16

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WWW '16: 25th International World Wide Web Conference

April 11 - 15, 2016

Québec, Montréal, Canada

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WWW '16 Companion Paper Acceptance Rate 115 of 727 submissions, 16%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

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Cited By

Keller CGlück FGerlach CSchlegel T(2022)Investigating the Potential of Data Science Methods for Sustainable Public TransportSustainability10.3390/su1407421114:7(4211)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074211
Taelman RColpaert PMannens EVerborgh RNgonga Ngomo AFundulaki IKrithara A(2019)Generating public transport data based on population distributions for RDF benchmarkingSemantic Web10.3233/SW-18031910:2(305-328)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3233/SW-180319
Meegahapola LKandappu TJayarajah KAkoglu LXiang SMisra ASong JKim MLane NBalan R(2019)BuScopeProceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3307334.3326091(41-53)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307334.3326091
Bouloukakis MPartarakis NDrossis IKalaitzakis MStephanidis C(2018)Virtual Reality for Smart City Visualization and MonitoringMediterranean Cities and Island Communities10.1007/978-3-319-99444-4_1(1-18)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99444-4_1
Yamakami T(2018)Lessons Learned in Tokyo Public Transportation Open Data APIsAdvances in Network-Based Information Systems10.1007/978-3-319-98530-5_31(374-384)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98530-5_31
Taelman RVerborgh RDe Nies TMannens EBarrett RCummings RAgichtein EGabrilovich E(2017)PoDiGGProceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion10.1145/3041021.3054210(843-844)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3041021.3054210
Vandewiele GColpaert PJanssens OVan Herwegen JVerborgh RMannens EOngenae FDe Turck FBarrett RCummings RAgichtein EGabrilovich E(2017)Predicting Train Occupancies based on Query Logs and External Data SourcesProceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion10.1145/3041021.3051699(1469-1474)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3041021.3051699
Colpaert PVerborgh RMannens E(2017)Public Transit Route Planning Through Lightweight Linked Data InterfacesWeb Engineering10.1007/978-3-319-60131-1_26(403-411)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60131-1_26
Jones JCloquet CAdam ADecuyper AThomas I(2016)Belgium through the Lens of Rail Travel Requests: Does Geography Still Matter?ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information10.3390/ijgi51102165:11(216)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2016
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi5110216

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