Analysis of Automated Fare Collection Data from Montevideo, Uruguay for Planning Purposes

Automated Fare Collection (AFC) and smartcard systems have been rapidly adopted by transit systems all over the world. The datasets produced by these systems are extensive and can be analyzed for planning purposes and system evaluation. This thesis analyzes the AFC data from the bus transit system in Montevideo, Uruguay and proposes methods to reconstruct itineraries, identify the alighting locations of transactions, and understand travel behaviour of smartcard users. The methods used successfully build itineraries for 97% of bus runs, identify 87.7% of alighting locations, and recreate 67.5% of complete trip chains of smartcard users. The complete trip chain data is then used to pair smartcards with individuals from the Montevideo travel survey. Only 10 to 15% of individuals from the survey could be paired with smartcards. These findings have important implications for incorporating AFC datasets in transportation planning and evaluating transit systems.M.A.S