Verification and Analysis of Traffic Evaluation Indicators in Urban Transportation System Planning Based on Multi-Source Data–A Case Study of Qingdao City, China

In transport planning and urban planning, some standard traffic indicators are proposed to measure the level of urban transportation system. In early days, household traffic survey data is almost the only dataset in traffic indicators evaluation. However, numerous facts have proved that household traffic survey is expensive and dangerous. To our delight, with the development of social networking, mobile internet, electronic commerce and so on, various data are growing exponentially. The vast amount of data provides some new methods with better visualization, easier to understand and more efficient in measuring the level of urban transportation system. This paper tries to have an analysis on traffic evaluation indicators in transport planning based on the multi-source data, i.e., household traffic survey data, license plate recognition data, smart card data and location based service (LBS) data. Results show that household travel survey data has the strongest applicability, which can be used to all indicators calculation. However, due to the limitations of data content, only parts of indicators can be calculated based on license plate recognition data, smart card data and LBS data. After comparing with the standard indicators, the following results are obtained: (1) In Qingdao city, the well-run public transport system has not yet formed. Statistics found that the whole trip time of public transport in central urban area (full day) is 2.5 times that of individual motor vehicle, which don’t meet the standard requirement (i.e., 1.5 times). (2) Parts of residents’ travel distance is too far. Results show that the average travel distance of the top 15% travelers is about 3.3 times of the average travel distance of urban residents, which don’t satisfy the standard requirement (i.e., 2.5 times). (3) Bus passengers and car users spend too much time on travelling compared other travel modes. Especially bus passengers need to spend 52 minutes to travel (the standard value is 40 minutes). (4) In Qingdao city, the proportion of public transport had been increasing. On the contrary, the non-motor travel has been decreasing.