A data day in the life of Perth’s public transport system

Over in Perth, the RAC WA and the Planning and Transport Research Centre (PATREC) have used data from passengers’ SmartRide cards to produce a data visualisation view of public transport use.

The project is called The Pulse of Perth. The data from the project was drawn from one month, October 2017, and then averaged so as to provide what RAC WA calls a typical weekday on the network. De-identified SmartRider data was used to compile the visualisations.

Hit the play button(s) below to watch two of the visualisations come to life:

In number form, here are some findings from the data collection:

• around 360,000 passenger boardings are made each day
• around 100,000 passenger boardings are made between 7:00am and 9:00am
• during the busiest hour (7:20am to 8:20am) almost 63,000 people board public transport, equivalent to 52,450 carloads of people (based on 1.2 persons/car)
• the average trip distance is 13 kilometres
• the average trip time is 18.5 minutes
• more than 920 buses and 45 trains are in service at 8.00am, carrying around 21,750 onboard passengers

‘Understanding how commuters get around Perth is critical for planning and managing our road and transport networks, to improve efficiency and make our journeys easier and more reliable. The Pulse of Perth project helps us to see beyond the numbers and identify the patterns and trends emerging across our public transport network,’ said Anne Still, RAC WA’s General Manager Public Policy and Mobility.