An Analysis of Travel Patterns in Barcelona Metro Using Tucker3 Decomposition

In recent years, a growing number of large, densely populated cities have emerged, which need urban traffic planning and therefore knowledge of mobility patterns. Knowledge of space-time distribution of passengers in cities is necessary for effective urban traffic planning and restructuring, especially in large cities. In this paper, the inbound ridership in the Barcelona metro is modelled into a three-way tensor so that each element contains the number of passenger in the ith station at the jth time on the kth day. Tucker3 decomposition is used to discover spatial clusters, temporal patterns, and the relationships between them. The results indicate that travel patterns differ between weekdays and weekends; in addition, rush and off-peak hours of each day have been identified, and a classification of stations has been obtained.