Results from Flocktracker Alpha Run Thursday, January 23, 2014

Welcome First, thank you for your interest. I hope this report will help demonstrate where the application is in the development process, as well as clarify some technical questions that have arisen during various meetings. This report was prepared in a short few hours in the day following our test run at our study site. The purpose of this report is to observe the improvement in data output from the new software, as well as to provide some quick descriptive analysis, in order to show how quickly a report can be produced, using this device and data-sourcing strategy. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to myself, Kuan Butts (kuanb@mit.edu), or any others on the research team. More information can be found by visiting us online, as well, at http://ocktracker.tumblr.com/.

About the Research Flocktracker is an application being funded through research under Professor Christopher Zegras Mobility Futures Collaborative at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Current research at Pereferico and the development of the new application Flocktracker is being lead by Kuan Butts, in collaboration with Daniel Palencia, Arturo Cadena, and Jose Manuel of Urban Launchpad MX and Danny Chiao, a current undergraduate computer science student (and coder extraordinaire) at MIT. This research builds off of work from the Summer of 2013, during a research initiative lead by Kuan and funded through MISTI and MIT Mexico in partnership with local travel analytics rm Urban Travel Logistics. Team members with Kuan for that project included Arturo Cadena, Liqun Chen, Gabriel Hernandez, Bin Jung, Daniel Palencia, and Clara Suh. Please feel free to contact Kuan with any further questions regarding the application or research.

Flocktracking Concept Flocktracking is a concept that aims to advance survey methodology, making data collection simpler, faster, and more robust. A group of well-trained volunteers, or Flock, are dispatched in a strategic manner to perform surveys targeted at understanding information in a dynamic manner. That is, they are dispersed in a manner intended to capture elements that might not be measurable in a static environment. For example, if one were to compare transit routes, as we did, volunteers would be dispatched on multiple buses, strategically through the day so as to capture peak and off-peak riders, and maintain a consistent presence and rotation of coverage over the linear distance of the ride. The application then converts this spatial coverage into a powerful, data-based, accrual of information that is dynamically arrayed by time and space. That is, in the current application, an individuals geospatial coordinates, the number of riders in the vehicle, the volume of riders distributed according to gender, the speed, and the time can all be combined into a packet

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and uploaded at 30 second intervals, enabling a high-resolution mapping of the total course of the trip. Surveys are uploaded and conjoined with this point specic data, allowing for robust data sets specic to a plethora of environmental factors.

Above: This is an image from the previous (and ongoing) research on and analysis of the CETRAMs that have been redeveloped in the north of Mexico City. The site here is CETRAM Ciudad Azteca, also known as Mexipuerto. The topographic element is a three-dimensional representation of security levels in the State of Mexico, emanating north from the station, which is located in the bottom right of the above image. Red and lower levels of the topography indicate low levels of perceived security, while greener and higher ridges indicate higher levels of perceived security.

This application is exible and is intended for use in a variety of formats. For example, the application is currently being used to perform a sociodemographic analysis on poverty and household living situations in the south of Mexico City, as well as tested for use in counting bicyclists by type in urban areas within the city.

Introduction to the Test Site A trial run of the new, natively coded application was undertaken on Thursday, January 23, 2014. The trial run targeted Ruta 56, a Peseros line operating out from Pereferico Oriente to Zapotitla in Tlahuac. While a number of Ruta 56 lines exist along Avenida Tlahuac, this particular line terminates at the southern base of a large mine to the southeast of the city. A heavily-carved mine acts as a landmark, signifying the farthest extent of dense urban development in this newly connected portion of the city. The Gold Line Metro that extends south from the city center has been designed to account for the presumed growth that this portion of the city is expected to have in the coming years. A visualization of this site can be seen in the following image.

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Above: The A marker indicates the termination point of the route studied. To the north of that, the large mountain that was mined can be seen. Differences in sourced satellite photos cause a gradient change approximately one-third of the way across the above image. This shift corresponds, approximately, with the extent of urbanization in Mexico City. Thus, this portion of Tlahuac can be seen as a frontier of sorts for the expanding urbanity. Image via Google Earth.

Target Facility Pereferico Oriente is one of two new CETRAM developments within the Mexico City metropolitan region. Previously, there had been 46 total CETRAM sites, with 39 of those being connected directly to the highly formalized Metro and Metrobus operations in the Federal District. The development of these two stations brings those numbers up to 48 and 41, respectively. Both new stations are along the new Gold Line Metro that runs in the south of Mexico City, with Pereferico Oriente at the midpoint and Tlahuac at the end of the line, farther to the south. Pereferico Oriente is the third in a growing list of newly developed multi-use transit facilities being built to enhance CETRAM sites. This site, in addition to Ciudad Azteca (Mexipuerto) and El Rosario, represent three very different models or urban intermodal commercial development. Unlike El Rosario and Ciudad Azteca, interviews on site suggest that this development was a project of the government alone, whereas the other two have been 30-year public land concessions to private developers, who use retail income to improve site facilities and nancially support improved vehicle operations. Pereferico Oriente has yet to secure any major tenants and, aside from the operations managers own personal shops, the structure remains completely empty. Costs for the stalls was quoted at $500.00 Pesos during interviews with tenants. These shops, which number about one-half dozen, are mostly owned by the woman who was put in charge of the station operations. Her intended job was to secure local commerce operators to ll the small stores, and large anchor retail functions for the larger space. So far none of the larger spaces have been lled, and the smaller spaces remain almost completely empty. The only primary stores in operation are owned by the operations woman, herself, and, according to an interview with a sales person, do not appear to be generating a sufficient income.

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Above: Image of the interior of CETRAM Pereferico Oriente. The building remains largely vacant to this day, approaching a year after its original completion. The mayor of the Federal District was scheduled, multiple times, to come to a ceremony for its official opening, but has yet to do so. Shops rent for $500.00 Pesos per square meter, a rental cost so high, and in a building with so little traffic, that no large tenants have yet to move in, citing the costs as exorbitant. Photograph taken by Kuan Butts on 22/01/2014.

Pereferico Oriente has been targeted simply because it is the third and newest CETRAM. Having started vehicular operations only on the 9th of January this year, the facilities remain extremely new and very limited. Thus, only one day of study was approached, as it really needs far greater ridership and use to be of any value in further research. Potentially, looking forward, another one-day test run will be performed, with the intention of monitoring shifts in perception over time.

Research Methodology Methodology and surveying was performed identically to last summer at Ciudad Azteca and El Rosario. The same questions were asked, and the scheduling formal was also kept exactly as before. The goal in doing this was to acquire some comparative results to roughly estimate how the improved capabilities of the application could enhance surveying performance for participants. As with the prior initiative, a route operating inside the CETRAM and one operating outside the CETRAM was selected. Currently, according to one station attendant, only ve routes have opted in to the CETRAM. The circulation present at the CETRAM makes access, especially for westward-bound vehicles, difficult to manage as there is only one entrance facing onto Tlahuac, thus requiring westward-bound drivers to maneuver their vehicle around the central divider, performing a u-turn into oncoming traffic, and then cross south across all lanes of traffic to enter the station entrance, situation just after a congested intersection. Currently, few operators opt to use it and, for the vehicles we studied, none used the CETRAM on the westward-bound trips, citing it as far too difficult to enter. Thus, inside CETRAM trips were only present for outbound trips.

Performance Results Simply put, the days results were extremely positive. Route accuracy was extremely high and the ability for the application to cache data, as well as move most upload tasks to the background, meant no crashes, no lost data, and extremely high resolution results. Because geolocation was an optimized background task, with the ability to cache location in instances

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of low or no signal environments, the application both ran smoothly, as well as was able to, mostly, capture all locations and all moments along the trip.

Above: Single day route data points (totaling 4,955 data point uploads). For comparison, if we had used this application instead of the older model during the Summer 2014 research initiative, we would have generated roughly 50,000 data points on our trips. Instead, due to the technical limitations of the previous application, we generated almost 11,000 data points. Accuracy is so high from this applications output, that, along Avenida Tlahuac on the left portion of the map, data points clearly illustrate the northern and southern side of the road for the inbound and outbound trips, reecting the separate lanes for the different sides of the road.

Above: An up close screen capture of data point location along Avenida Tlahuac. Points, in general, stick to their side of the avenue and most lie, reasonably, within the limit of the roadway, with some deviation still present.

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Above: Here, a screen capture of the same length of road is again presented, this time only showing outbound routes, traveling east on the southern side of the avenue. As can be seen, in comparison with the previous image, most points for this portion are able to stay locked to the southern side of the road, demonstrating the level of accuracy achieved with the smartphone application.

By comparison, as can be seen in the below image, the previous model of the application regularly lost signal and, as a result, did not have locational data throughout the route at anywhere near the level of consistency. Furthermore, because it lacked the triangulation capabilities of the current application, its accuracy was poor, at best. Thus, analyses performed on that data functioned at a resolution of 200 meters. The current application allows for accuracy within 5 meters or less. In examining the data from the current Pereferico Oriente run, only three outliers were found from a full day of testing with three individuals for around 8 hours. That is to say, three outliers occurred within a 24-hour span of use. We are condent in the quality of this output, given these results. Furthermore, because of the robust degree of data output, far more accurate performance measures can be made in regards to speed.

Above: Similar route data output from a single days effort along a portion of road emanating from Ciudad Azteca, when using the previous application. Route data was far less consistently uploaded, impeded by the poor functionality

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of the application and inability to handle multiple tasks, from data uploads to survey compiling, simultaneously, as well as the new version. While the data is still useful for more general measurements and conceptual elements such as perception, the increased accuracy of the current application will enable far more targeted locational analysis.

Because of the consistency of uploads, speed can easily be understood by the clustering of uploads. In areas with more dense uploads, one might interpret that the vehicle covered less ground between upload instances. In creating a heat map, areas with the greatest clustering also corresponded with the areas of the slowest speeds. Thus, it can be seen that Avenida Tlahuac exhibits the greatest level of congestion, over all, in the following image. These areas of greatest congestion on that avenue are highlighted in red on the heat map. The bottom right portion of the trip, which features the least intense coverage, also indicates a route differentiation from the standard observed path. On one inbound and one outbound trip, a driver happened to diverge from the typical path, instead heading south from the drop point and turning onto Avenida Tlahuac farther east than the rest of the trips. This application helps in understanding route divergence and, with the increased accuracy of this application, makes the specic nuances of each trip and each route far more legible than in previous iterations of the technology.

Above: Heat map of upload point intensity along the route. Areas of red have more upload point activity.

From a numbers perspective in terms of surveys, the results also extremely positive. Before going into detail on this trips performance, a brief description of the data statistics from the research last summer are to be presented, in order to attain some perspective. Last summer, six volunteers would operate at two stations per shift, with pairs operating on the ground at the CETRAM, in the route operating within the CETRAM, and in the route operating without the CETRAM. The total survey output was over 1,500, with roughly 1,000 of those being from in-vehicle surveying. Thus, over 7 days, 1,000 surveys were performed. This averages to roughly 72 surveys performed per day, per site within the vehicles, with four volunteers over a period of two three-hour shifts. This averages to 36 surveys per shift. Results from the Pereferico Oriente study, which used only three volunteers and only three full round trip rides, on a trip that was 5 kilometers, which is roughly one-third the distance of the previous CETRAM study trips, and averaged 30-40 minutes of ride time, generated 122 total surveys for the day, or roughly 61 surveys per shift. This is an output increase of roughly 70%

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over similar statistics from the summers effort. While these numbers are not perfectly comparable, given the different environments and time of year, the application and its ability of catalog processes and run background tasks had a clear role in enabling the productivity of each volunteer to rise signicantly.

Descriptive Analysis While a more robust data analysis, including the multivariate analysis performed with content from the previous and extended research effort from last summer, would take signicantly more time, a simple presentation of the results from the single day session have been provided to demonstrate what can be immediately observed from such an effort. Simple statistics, such as breakdowns in security perception by category (such as point security), can be displayed live, via Google Fusion Tables. Below is the nal breakdown by men and women, with results that might be expected in such an environment, with men exhibiting higher levels of security perception than women.

Above: On the left is perceived point security, aggregately, among all men. On the right is perceived point security, aggregately, among all women. In general, and as one might expect, men feel more secure than women.

Above: Statistics of participants by gender. Most survey respondents were female, with roughly 50% more than males.

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Other simple, but valuable data points, such as origin and destination results, can automatically develop themselves while the survey is running. As can be seen from the below results, Tlahuac is a fairly isolated region of the Federal District

Above: On the left are origin results and on the right are presented destination results, arranged alphabetically and measured by percentage.

While trips from Ciudad Azteca and Mexipuerto were expansive, with coverage approaching 90% of the metropolitan region, this corner municipality within the Federal District remains fairly isolated, with trips typically operating within or nearby Tlahuac. Controlling for only trips originating in Iztapalapa and Tlahuac, the two bordering southeastern zones within the Federal District, we can see that insular travel patterns make up a vast proportion of the observed trips.

Above: Pie chart showing trips that started from Iztapalapa or Tlahuac and their destinations. Most trips, almost 85%, tend to stay within the two regions. This is likely due to the insular nature of the region and, over time, it would be interesting to observe how the Metros installation changes travel patterns and expands the typical mobility patterns of commuters in this region.

Monitoring these results live can give a sense of accomplishment and team effort to the volunteers operating the application. Thus, it can assist, in and of itself, in increasing surveyor output by increasing their pride and interest in the project. This, compounded with the personal prole monitor, which logs on the phone the number of surveys performed, the time riding, and the number of kilometers travelled, adds to the overall user experience and can allow for feedback mechanisms that provide the necessary support to improve surveyor performance. Results can also begin to demonstrate if a question is not functioning correctly, and thus alert survey architects to issues before it is too late, thus allowing them to address these issues on the y. One example is our question of rating security by the importance it

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plays in making travel decisions. Because the survey is so focused on security, and the question is asked without providing the opportunity to consider other options, individuals might tend to select security more than they would normally. Thus, our extremely lop sided results, while ultimately tooled as more of an anecdote in the current research, could have been spotted early on in the process using this tool, and xed accordingly.

Above: As might be expected, security plays a signicant role in transportation decision, with about 85% of individuals considering personal security the most important or an important component in making travel decisions.

While generating the three dimension image of the security perception results as a topographic, three dimensional image (as was shown for the example from the previous summers work) is a bit more time-intensive, a quick and nearly as effective series of images can be curated quickly and easily, to demonstrate heat map clusterings of certain perception levels. These could be adjusted for any other variable of interest very easily, through the map visualization option, built into Google Fusion Tables. The below images make it fairly clear that high security perception levels are present along the main road, Avenida Tlahuac, and lower levels dominate the inner neighborhoods present towards the end of the routes trip.

Above: Heat map revealing clustering of low perception levels for personal security (ratings of 1 or 2). Areas of greatest density appear in red. These sites can be seen clustered around Metro stations along Avenida Tlahuac and towards the small side streets that lead through the neighborhoods and to the termination point.

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Above: Heat map revealing clustering of high perception levels of personal security (ratings of 4 or 5). Areas of greatest density appear in red. These sites can be seen clustered primarily along the main road, with a far more limited presence within the neighborhood to the north, at the end of the routes trip.

From the presented analysis, potential for future studies should, hopefully, be easily noted. The ability to generate so many live statistics, and to do so with the ease we observe, is a great strength and, hopefully, has been demonstrated effectively through this report.

Above: Pie graph demonstrating level of awareness of the RFID chip system in place at Ciudad Azteca. An overwhelming majority of riders were unaware of it, though those that were aware of it tended to think positively towards it, or at least neutral. The low knowledge rates were expected, and correlate with the fact that most trips are fairly insular. Thus, users of transport in Tlahuac are unlikely to moving across the city frequently and, thus, are far less likely to encounter Ciudad Azteca. It will be interesting to monitor how much this knowledge changes over time and, if peoples awareness of this system increases as they warm to the new Metro line.

Closing Statements The ability for the application to function as a very quick and effective measurer of dynamic data, while providing descriptive statistics on the go, should increase the effectiveness of sch efforts substantially. While more surveying would be needed for further site analysis and a real

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incorporation of the multi-variate analysis performed from the summer research and analysis, the potential should be highlighted and clear through this report. Furthermore, the efficiency and ease of deployment should make such an initiative and the use of the application attractive, we hope, as an option in future such efforts. Thank you again for reading and if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at kuanb@mit.edu.

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