Ring aggregation pattern of Human Travel Trips

TL;DR

This paper uncovers a 'ring aggregation' travel pattern in metro systems, where individuals tend to move along a ring at a consistent distance from the city center, revealing a fundamental link between travel behavior and city structure.

Contribution

It introduces the novel concept of 'ring aggregation' as a key travel pattern in metro systems and demonstrates its exclusivity to large-scale urban mobility.

Findings

Linear relationship between travel distance and distance to city center.

Travel movements tend to aggregate around a ring at a fixed distance from the center.

Pattern is specific to metro systems, not observed in bicycles or taxis.

Abstract

Although a lot of attentions have been paid to human mobility, the relationship between travel pattern with city structure is still unclear. Here we probe into this relationship by analyzing the metro passenger trip data.There are two unprecedented findings. One, from the average view a linear law exists between the individual's travel distance with his original distance to city center. The mechanism underlying is a travel pattern we called "ring aggregation", i.e., the daily movement of city passengers is just aggregating to a ring with roughly equal distance to city center.Interestingly, for the round trips the daily travel pattern can be regarded as a switching between the home ring at outer area with the office ring at the inner area. Second, this linear law and ring aggregation pattern seems to be an exclusive characteristic of the metro system. It can not be found in short distance transportation modes, such as bicycle and taxi, neither as multiple transportation modes. This means the ring aggregation pattern is a token of the relationship between travel pattern with city structure in the large scale space.