01373681

Component

The goal of this paper is to use an emerging data source, Twitter, and conduct sentiment analysis to evaluate transit riders' satisfaction. Transit authorities have access to vast amounts of performance metrics that measure ridership, timeliness, efficiency, safety, cleanliness, and service to name a few. These performance metrics, however, are generally one-sided; they represent the interests of the business and are not customer based. This paper recognizes the limitations of standard performance metrics and attempts to gauge transit riders' sentiment by measuring Twitter feeds. Sentiment analysis software is used to classify a population of rider's sentiment over a period of time. Conclusions are drawn from totals of positive and negative sentiment, normalized average sentiment, and the total number of Tweets collected over a time period.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP030 Public Transportation Marketing and Fare Policy

01362476

12-0675

English

23p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Customer satisfaction; Data collection; Metrics (Quantitative assessment); Performance measurement; Social media; Transit riders

Chicago Transit Authority; Twitter

Market sentiment

Data and Information Technology; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-0675

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 4:56PM