Deduction of passengers' route choices from smart card data

Deducing passengers' route choices from smart card data provides public transport operators the opportunity to evaluate and improve their passenger service. Particularly in the case of disruptions, when traditional route choice models may not be valid, this is an advantage. This paper proposes a method for deducing the chosen route of passengers based on smart card data and validates this method on a real-life data set. The method deduces the correct route for about 95% of the journeys per day in our validation sample, and also in the case of disruptions. Moreover, it is shown how this method can be used to analyze and evaluate passenger service by a case study based on a real-life data set of Netherlands Railways, which is the largest passenger railway operator in the Netherlands.