Delineation of Traffic Analysis Zone for Public Transportation OD Matrix Estimation Based on Socio-spatial Practices

This paper aims to develop and validate an efficient method for delineation of public transit analysis zones (PTTAZ), particularly for origin-destination (OD) matrix prediction for transit operation planning. Existing methods have a problem in reflecting the level of spatial precision, travel characteristics, travel demand growth, access to transit stations, and most importantly, the direction of transit routes. This study proposes a new methodology to redelineate existing traffic analysis zones (TAZ) to create PTTAZ in order to allocate travel demand to transit stops. We aim to achieve an accurate prediction of the OD matrix for public transportation (PT). The matrix should reflect the passenger accessibility in the socioeconomic and socio-spatial characterization of PTTAZ and minimize intrazonal trips. The proposed methodology transforms TAZ-based to PTTAZ-based data with sequential steps through multiple statistical methods. In short, the generation of PTTAZ establishes homogeneous sub-zones representing the relationship between passenger flow, network structure, land use, population, socio-economic characteristics, and, most importantly, existing bus transit infrastructure. To validate the proposed scheme, we implement the framework for India’s Vishakhapatnam bus network and compare the results with the household survey. The results show that the PTTAZ-based OD matrix represents a realistic scenario for PT demand