Exploring traveler roles based on potential group travelers extracted from metro smart card data

Authors

• Xiaoying Shi
• Ruixuan Wang
• Chao Wu
• Dandan Liu
• Haitao Xu
• Yongping Zhang

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2026

Subject Area

mode - subway/metro, place - asia, place - urban, ridership - behaviour, technology - passenger information, technology - ticketing systems

Keywords

Travel behavior, smart card data, metro

Abstract

Understanding group travel behavior is essential for unraveling the social dynamics underlying urban mobility, supporting more accurate demand forecasting and targeted service planning. Although previous studies have examined the mobility patterns of familiar strangers and group travelers, the spatiotemporal characteristics of group travel across different traveler roles remain underexplored. To fill this gap, this paper proposes an analytical framework for systematically exploring traveler roles in potential group travel behavior. We first identify potential social trips using the concept of spatiotemporal co-existence and then construct a large-scale social network of potential group travelers. By analyzing node features of the network, travelers are classified into distinct groups and the spatiotemporal mobility patterns of each group are subsequently examined. We employ a large-scale smart card dataset from Shanghai's metro system as a case study. The results indicate that potential social trips are more likely to occur during non-commuting hours. Social travelers exhibit high levels of group travel activity, while social isolators show low engagement in group travel except at major transportation hubs, likely for business-related purposes. Weekday- and holiday-preferred group travelers display spatial preferences associated with medical and recreational destinations, respectively. These findings offer valuable insights for socially aware transportation planning and user-centric urban policy-making.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.

Comments

Applied Geography Home Page:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01436228

Recommended Citation

Shi, X., Wang, R., Wu, C., Liu, D., Xu, H., & Zhang, Y. (2026). Exploring traveler roles based on potential group travelers extracted from metro smart card data. Applied Geography, 187, 103872.