Forecasting short-term subway passenger flow using Wi-Fi data: comparative analysis of advanced time-series methods
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Accurately monitoring passenger demand fluctuations is crucial for streamlined operations of subway systems and informed decision-making. This study presents a detailed Time Series Analysis of the Toronto subway system using Wi-Fi data connection from devices as a predictor of passenger volume. Various time series models were tested for short-term forecasting, including Linear Regression, Exponential Smoothing, ARIMA, Random Forest, N-BEATS, and T-GCN. An end-to-end modeling implementation process was carried out, and the performance of each model was evaluated. The primary objective was to assess the effectiveness of short-term prediction models for univariate time series at the system level and discuss deployment challenges. While conventional time series models are fast to implement and interpretable, they require a more in-depth data exploration phase for validation, making scaling at the system level difficult. Additionally, maintenance is more challenging with conventional models, and their exploratory analysis phases need to be repeated when the models degrade over time. Prediction difficulty varied across each subway station, indicating the need for a more thorough calibration or hybrid approach, especially for transfer stations. Despite the different uses and qualities of each model in our scenario, Random Forest and Exponential Smoothing emerged as the best performers and could be a satisfactory option for robust demand forecasting at the system level.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".