The Public Transport vs. Mobility Tool (PTM Tool)
The PTM Tool compares public transport offers with the potential mobility demand of the entire population. It was developed for public transport companies that want to optimize their timetable planning. The PTM tool visualises – similar to the PMM tool – the mobility flows of the entire population between a selected community and all other communities that were the destination or starting point for outgoing or incoming mobility: The higher the mobility the bigger the bar. The tool uses mobile phone data. Same as for the PMM Tool, the users can choose between incoming and outgoing mobility flows and determine the period of the analysis (hourly, daily, or monthly schedule).
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However, the „spider figure“ that visualizes the mobility streams between a selected municipality and all other destinations (outgoing) or origins (incoming) also carries a colour code.
A green „spider leg“, for example, means the connection is served by the public transport company at least twice per hour. A red spider leg, on the other hand, (i.e. less than one connection) means that there may be a need for action - in particular for the “thick”, red spider legs.
The underlying timetable information is fed into the PTM Tool in a GTFS format. As of 2021 transport companies across most countries in the EU need to provide their timetable data in this GTFS format as standard. As such no post-processing of the millions of data records is necessary for feeding them into the PTM Tool.
After this first quick very intuitive analysis, which allows to identify immediately the two, three connections that provide room for improvement (high mobility, insufficient transport offers), the data can be analysed in more detail. The user can download aggregated data sets for the chosen connection and time period and can process this data further in their own programmes.
Pilot Case
For a description of the full pilot case please read the article “Providing on-demand transport offers for everybody in Ludwigslust-Parchim (LUP)”
Guidelines on how to adopt the tool in other regions
It was developed as an open-source software and is available for further development and replication. The code is accessible from the GitHub Platform:
https://github.com/WhereGroup/mara-ptm-importer
and
https://github.com/WhereGroup/mara-services
The guideline / README for the installation of the software is available for download here: User documentation for the MARA PTM Importer.pdf
Partner implementing this tool:
