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Estimating travel patterns in Bangalore - possible approach
Written By s_yajaman - 26 September, 2009
Bangalore Design BMTC Bangalore Bus Analysis Routing Transportation public transport
Have been chastisized by Tarle for pouring ATF on burning embers in a previous post and not using my praja time on more useful things :).
Quite a few posts on how we should design routes for BMTC buses (regardless of what language the board is in :)). For that we need to know travel patterns on a typical working day (assuming that we want to primarily help people trying to reach work). We should not use ticket sales as an estimate of demand becase demand in that case is biased - biased by whatever route is already there.
I am NOT a market research expert. But this would broadly be the method.
a. Statistics is our friend here. Given the large numbers using buses there will be patterns. So we use statistical methods to do this.
b. We cannot do a census. We will have to use sampling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size Based on this we can go for a sample size of 1000 and still get very good of accuracy. If cost is a problem even n=500 gives extremely good levels of accuracy.
c. We need to decide if we sample only users or non-users as well. If we assume that by better routing we will be able to attract non-users we need to bring them into the mix. Maybe 4-5% of the total sample. Or assume that an area is not covered currently - we should definitely include it. A market research person can shed more light.
d. We have to ensure a good representation of all residential areas. Let's assume there are 100 pincodes/200 wards. We have to systematically sample 500 persons from each. Is he/she a user. If yes - where does she most often go to in a bus. How many times a month? Which are the other destinations. Again - market research help is needed
e. Once we have this data, we can find out ratio of users/non-users for that pincode. If it is 1.5/1 we can say that 40% of that pincode/ward are bus users. With BBMP ward data,we can get an estimate of total bus users from that ward.
f. Based on the destination answer, we can get an estimate of proportion of users going to a destination. Have a vague feeling we need to weight by the frequency of usage in a month. Using this we would know what percent of people go to which destinations.
g. Using (e) and (f) we can get an idea of travel patterns. There will be nuances like time of day to be captured, etc. But this in a nutshell would be how I would do it.
Srivathsa
COMMENTS
thanks sri. this was in the making for a long time. i like ids' idea and we should keep that as a "deliverable", while we wade through the question.
also khader saar has been raising an important flag about how some regions which are not serviced. so one of the biases to look for might be the bias due to leaving out those unserviced. these are different from those who dont desire the service. khader saar should kindly provide inputs on this.
vvr - 27 September, 2009 - 06:09
Srivathsa,
I have some expertise that might be relevant having run a market research organization for a decade and a half. Will be happy to provide my $0.02 worth of insights into the mechanics of the research process if that would be useful.
One of the first few things we did in any market research project was to mock up the final results and then ask the user(s) of the research to pretend they have all the data they were looking for and then ask how they will use the information. This step ensures that the research objectives are crisp and there is alignment among all stakeholders. While a brief description of this step appears deceptively simple and straightforward, the reality is quite different . This step is the most difficult part of a study.
I have not done any research in the past 5 years (and so my skills are somewhat rusty) and have not done anything at all in India and so am not sure what tools may be available here today for selecting the sample, the instrument for collecting data (paper, phone, internet) etc.
Like I said before, will be happy to assist in the process in any way you think meaningful. We can probably talk some more at the next meeting.
VVR
Vasanth - 28 September, 2009 - 00:41
Let us start a Poll asking :
You travel from:
1. South Bangalore - North Bangalore
2. South Bangalore - East Bangalore
3. South Bangalore - West Bangalore
4. South Bangalore - Central Bangalore
1. Central Bangalore - North Bangalore
2. Central Bangalore - East Bangalore
3. Central Bangalore - West Bangalore
4. Central Bangalore - South Bangalore
and so on....
It gives us a rough idea..
kbsyed61 - 27 September, 2009 - 11:29
Yajamanre,
Thanks to you for this important post. Understanding the need is the one of the vital input to any design and implementation. I like your idea of covering all the wards in BBMP jurisdication.
Syed
idontspam - 26 September, 2009 - 19:25
Can we start the poll here with a few questions as a project and use some viral mktg to get the sample?
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