Simulating Travel Behaviour using Location Positioning Data Collected with A Mobile Phone System

Mobile communication technology has recently become applicable in tracking surveys of individual travel behaviour in urban space. This is due to an increase in capacity to collect more precise time and location data of moving objects. This paper presents a study of a tracking survey system, which uses the location positioning function of a PHS (Personal Handy phone System) to collect travel data from 96 spectators at a Sumo tournament held in Osaka. It is shown that the space-time distribution map of location positioning data is useful in understanding the concentration and dispersion of travel demand in a day. A simulation-based methodology is proposed which involves multiplying the 96 samples by thousands of spectators. A number of profiles of hypothetical spectators were generated using the probability distribution of the sampled spectators. Another simulation model was developed to estimate the movement of spectators at a match held at a different venue. The probability distributions of the original samples were also used to generate spectator’ profiles. These profiles were then put into a railway network simulator that described the movement of spectators and the quality of railway services in a congested situation. Case studies in the Osaka Nagai Stadium were examined to evaluate the congestion reduction policies at railway stations near the stadium. Along with guiding spectators to the less congested stations, sub-attractions in the stadium after the game were also found to be effective in reducing peak time congestion at popular stations.