Urban Heartbeats (Daily Cycle of Public Transport Intensity) - Geoinformatics for Intelligent Transportation - page 194

Urban Heartbeats (Daily Cycle of Public
Transport Intensity)

Ivica Paulovi č ov á , Slavom í r Ondo š , Luk áš Belu šá k

and Dagmar Kusendov á

Abstract Main focus is put on the daily cycle of public transport intensity. In the
city, commuting between places of housing and places of work one of the most
important types of recurring organized spatial interactions. This is re

ected also on
the public transport which has tendency of creating communities as a reaction to
demand. This feature of public transport in a city can be clearly identi

fl

ed through
network analysis. Network approach recently developed in theoretical physics and
related disciplines is still a promising direction of research also in the case of urban
transportation studies. We use public transport system in a usual European city, a
representative day in Bratislava, to demonstrate that it behaves systematically along
the daily cycle in response to changing demand. Even through only basic
description of data was calculated, the daytime rhythm, which we call the urban
heartbeat, can be clearly recognized in the network structure. Though, the difference
between intensity is clearly expressed, only the difference between night and day
seems to have bigger statistical difference.

Keywords Public transport Dynamic network analysis Community Bratislava