An international comparison of urban rail boarding and alighting rates

Abstract

Although there is considerable engineering and demand planning analysis in the development of urban railways around the world, less attention is paid to the understanding of key operating conditions such as station stop times. The current paper takes forward research by London Underground, and shows that it is applicable to situations around the world without substantial changes in parameter values or the resulting passenger flowrates. Where passenger flow is substantially different, this can generally be explained by particular differences in the physical characteristics of the site, rolling stock, or passenger demand.

Development of a boarding and alighting time model for the urban rail transit in a megacity

“…It is known that the fractional square model proposed by Weston [15] is widely fits on the normal urban rail transit [7]. The Weston model is based on the fact that the boarding or alighting time per a person is decreased because the passengers can board or alight successively in a line if the number of boarding and alighting passengers is sufficiently large.…”

“…A number of researchers have been studied to increase the efficiency of the urban rail transit. They focused on the improvement of the signal system or the reduction of the train headway in order to increase the line capacity [2]. The other major factor that affects the line capacity is dwell time that is the amount of time taken at a station for a train to stop and to start [3].…”

“…These parameters are included into the boarding and alighting time model in different forms by country and by line [2,6]. These differences result from not only the differences in the specifications of the train and the platform but also the differences in human behaviours.…”

“…These differences result from not only the differences in the specifications of the train and the platform but also the differences in human behaviours. Therefore, the boarding and alighting time model based on a certain country or a line cannot be applied blindly to the other cases [7].…”

Methodology for Determining Dwell Times Consistent with Passenger Flows in the Case of Metro Services

“…Statistical techniques were the first kind of approach proposed in the literature [2,3] and were borrowed from the bus service sector [4][5][6]. More recent contributions in this field are provided by [7][8][9][10]. However, broadly speaking, these methods are not generic enough to be applied in contexts other than those in which they were developed, and moreover, they provide no details about passenger behavioural rules when a train arrives.…”