Sleepless in Seoul: ‘The Ant and the Metrohopper’

Abstract

One of Aesop's (La Fontain's) famous fables 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' is widely known to give a moral lesson through comparison between the hard working ant and the party-loving grasshopper. Here we show a slightly different version of this fable, namely, "The Ant and the Metrohopper", which describes human mobility patterns in modern urban life. Numerous real transportation networks and the trajectory data have been studied in order to understand mobility patterns. We study trajectories of commuters on the public transportation of Metropolitan Seoul, Korea. Smart cards (Integrated Circuit Cards; ICCs) are used in the public transportation system, which allow collection of transit transaction data, including departure and arrival stations and time. This empirical analysis provides human mobility patterns, which impact traffic forecasting and transportation optimization, as well as urban planning.