Evaluating the impacts of bus fare on social equity based on IC card data in China

Bus fare equity has attracted significant attention in China in the past few years. Compared with developed countries, China's intelligent transportation systems are in their infancy, with immature bus fare policies being used in many public transit systems. The methods used for evaluating public transit fare equity in developed countries compare different fare policies based on rich data and cannot be directly applied in developing countries like China. In this paper, we present a method that uses IC card data, bus-mounted GPS data, and relevant statistical yearbook data to evaluate the equity of flat bus fare. The method ranks the factors that influence the impacts of bus fare on social equity for different passenger groups and indicates that trip distance and passenger boarding time are the two primary factors for bus fare equity from a resource allocation perspective. Finally, we present a case study that evaluates the flat fare policy for route 204 in Suzhou using the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method is feasible.