Train Dwell Time Models for Urban Rail Transit - Investigation on Impact of Station Design and Passenger Flow Dynamics
Creators: name: Buchunde, Suryakant
Publisher: name: Graduate Studies
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: dwell time
subject: regression analysis
subject: microsimulation
subject: station design
subject: automatic passenger counting (APC)
subject: automatic vehicle location (AVL)
subject: Passenger flow
subject: Sociology--Transportation

description: Dwell time is an important part of the total travel time in urban rail transit, which directly impacts the system’s reliability and line capacity. In this thesis the impact of station design, train load, and passenger flow in terms of boarding fraction on train dwell times is investigated through a system-wide automated data sources including Automatic Passenger Counter (APC) and Automatic Vehicle Locating (AVL) data in the Light Rail Transit System in Calgary. Moreover, a simulation model of train station in Calgary in PTV-Vissim is developed. Methods to improve simulation results are proposed by including passengers’ walking behaviour and their interaction within the transit system. Alternative dwelling strategies are then explored. Regression analyses were conducted to achieve accurate dwell time estimation by calculating passenger load per car, boarding, and alighting passengers per door, and also identifying the critical door with the highest boarding and alighting. Observations for each critical door were divided based on the fraction of boarding passengers with respect to the sum of boarding and alighting. Six stations with distinct geometric designs were selected for comparison to assess their impact on dwell time. The results indicate that for dominant boarding or alighting, a longer time is needed per passenger to alight or board, respectively. The findings in this thesis also indicate that a station with a middle platform and two entrances positioned in the middle performed better in terms of dwell time in the case of alighting-dominant and mixed passenger flow. For stations experiencing boarding-dominant passenger flows, side platforms with multiple entrances at ends and middle outperformed. Narrower platforms experienced significantly longer dwell times than other selected stations under similar demand. The desired speed factor is used in Vissim to adjust the walking speed of pedestrians in the simulation. Moreover, the social force parameters are tuned to improve the accuracy of the simulation by adjusting the forces around pedestrians and their interactions with their surroundings. As such, the Vissim models were improved by accessing Vissim objects through their Component Object Model (COM) interface, which allows communication and interaction between software components across different programming languages and environments, in Python to enhance the simulation performance. The simulation results indicate that a dedicated boarding and alighting door with uniform distribution of boarding passengers on the platform outperformed in handling mixed passenger flow. On the other hand, uniform distribution of boarding passengers on the platform outperformed in the cases of boarding-dominant and alighting-dominant passenger flows. While the conclusion regarding the station design may not be generic, the proposed model provides a consistent and adaptable approach to study the impact of station design and passenger flows on urban rail dwell times facilitating more informed decision-making for station design or modification and enhancement of the overall rail system performance.