# Unified Occupancy on a Public Transport Network through Combination of AFC and APC Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05546 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05546/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [A Survey on Deep Learning for Human Mobility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02825/) (2020)
- [On Designing Day Ahead and Same Day Ridership Level Prediction Models for City-Scale Transit Networks Using Noisy APC Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04989/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [A Closed-loop, State-centric, Multi-agent Framework for Passenger Load Estimation from Heterogeneous Data Streams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19834/) (2026)
- [GHR-VLM: Making Zero-Shot Transit Video Analytics Realizable with Grounded Hybrid Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13569/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In a transport network, the onboard occupancy is key for gaining insights into travelers' habits and adjusting the offer. Traditionally, operators have relied on field studies to evaluate ridership of a typical workday. However, automated fare collection (AFC) and automatic passenger counting (APC) data, which provide complete temporal coverage, are often available but underexploited. It should be noted, however, that each data source comes with its own biases: AFC data may not account for fraud, while not all vehicles are equipped with APC systems. This paper introduces the unified occupancy method, a geostatistical model to extrapolate occupancy to every course of a public transportation network by combining AFC and APC data with partial coverage. Unified occupancy completes missing APC information for courses on lines where other courses have APC measures, as well as for courses on lines where no APC data is available at all. The accuracy of this method is evaluated on real data from several public transportation networks in France.