Verification and Optimization of Metro Fare Clearing Models Based on Travel Route Reconstruction

How to verify and optimize metro fare clearing models efficiently and accurately is a research focus in metro operations. Metro fare clearing models are mostly based on probability distributions. In such models, the normal distribution of travel time corresponding to the section probabilities is used to calculate the route choice probabilities of passengers on a multi-route metro network. By integrating the operating mileage proportions of each metro line operator and the corresponding route choice probabilities, the fare clearing proportions are calculated for all the operators of the metro network. To verify the accuracy of the fare clearing proportions, we propose a travel route reconstruction approach based on cell phone data acquisition technique. With wireless access point (AP) sensors installed at transfer stations, the unique medium access control (MAC) address of the smart phone with Wi-Fi function turned on is recorded and transmitted to a data analysis platform. After matching the MAC address information with time and location, the travel route of the smart phone user is reconstructed. Then, the parameters in the fare clearing model are verified and optimized according to the travel route choice probabilities. The proposed methodology is applied in Hangzhou metro network for experiment, and the metro fare clearing model is verified and modified by reconstructing the actual travel routs of the local passengers.