It is well reported that long commutes have a large detrimental effect on people’s health and on the economy of cities. Interestingly, despite the strong impact on our daily lives, a simple way to measure the quality of urban transportation is still unknown. We performed data analysis on the transportation network of two large cities (Fortaleza and Dublin). By dividing each bus trajectory into equal pieces of space, we determine the distribution of time intervals for each trip, and we propose that the heterogeneity of the time distribution can be used to characterize the quality of that trip. Inspired by the use of the Gini coefficient to quantify the inequality level of income distribution, we used the Gini in order to characterize the heterogeneity level of the time distribution. We demonstrated that Gini coefficients are strongly correlated with peak usage of the mobility system, as well as the schedule delays in the system. Finally, our method can be used to find highly heterogeneous trips which have a large negative effect on the urban mobility and can help find new directions for new public planning strategies.
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