Data and codes support “Identifying Public Transport Transit Desert from Travel Flows perspective”

This repository contains the data used for the manuscript: "Identifying Public Transport Transit Desert from Travel Flows perspective".AbstractPublic transport transit deserts refer to areas where public transport supply fails to meet the high travel demands of transit-dependent groups, resulting in inefficient trips. Accurate identification of such transit deserts has become a crucial prerequisite for optimizing transport resource allocation and promoting urban sustainability. Most existing studies focus on the supply-demand characteristics of transport resources in “location-based” spatial analysis, while neglecting the “flow-based” end-to-end process of individual trips. This makes it difficult to identify public transport transit deserts caused by congestion, inconvenient transfers, or detoured routes in actual travel. To address this gap, this study introduces the concept of public transport transit deserts from a travel flow perspective, and identifies their spatial distribution by integrating mobile phone signaling data, AMap API data, and other basic geographic information. We defined a public transport competition index to quantify the travel efficiency of individual flows, and further detected irregularly shaped transit deserts with a significant number of inefficient travel flows in urban areas using an ant colony-optimization based flow clustering algorithm. A total of 121 flow transit deserts are identified within the 6th Ring Road of Beijing during morning and evening peak hours, with their spatial distribution and classification characteristics analyzed. Furthermore, we investigated the influencing factors of these flow transit deserts, including population distribution, jobs-housing balance, and transportation infrastructure, and highlighted their differences from traditional location-based transit deserts. This work provides a scientific basis for formulating long-term transportation planning strategies and promoting the coordinated development of land use, public facilities, and transportation systems in future urban planning.