A hybrid method for intercity transport mode identification based on mobility features and sequential relations mined from cellular signaling data

The proliferation of mobile phones has generated vast quantities of cellular signaling data (CSD), covering extensive spatial areas and populations. These data, containing spatiotemporal information, can be employed to identify and analyze intercity transport modes, providing valuable insights for understanding travel distribution and behavior. However, CSD are primarily intended for communication purposes and are not directly suitable for transportation research due to issues such as low spatial precision, sparse sampling granularity, and lacking traffic semantic features. This article proposes a Hybrid model for identifying individual intercity transport modes based on CSD. Several multidimensional mobility features are proposed that extract interpretable motion characteristics from CSD. A preliminary transport mode probability judgment is made based on the mobility features. Then, the complete transport mode is confirmed considering the temporal continuity correlation of the entire trace. Experiments confirm the Hybrid model's superior precision in identifying transport modes over baseline models, with an average F1 score of 0.92, maintaining high accuracy across various trajectory lengths. This model would support further studying individual intercity travel behavior patterns, aiding transportation planning and operational management decisions using CSD.