Towards Understanding the Impact of Crime in a Choice of a Route by a Bus Passenger

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simulation platform to study how crime influences bus passengers' route choices, revealing that most prioritize security over efficiency, often choosing less optimal routes to avoid crime.

Contribution

It presents a novel simulation platform for analyzing crime's impact on urban mobility and demonstrates its application using real data from a large Brazilian city.

Findings

Most users prefer less efficient routes for safety reasons

A small percentage follow optimal time-based routes

Security concerns significantly influence route choices

Abstract

In this paper we describe a simulation platform that supports studies on the impact of crime on urban mobility. We present an example of how this can be achieved by seeking to understand the effect, on the transport system, if users of this system decide to choose optimal routes of time between origins and destinations that normally follow. Based on real data from a large Brazilian metropolis, we found that the percentage of users who follow this policy is small. Most prefer to follow less efficient routes by making bus exchanges at terminals. This can be understood as an indication that the users of the transport system privilege the security factor.