Passenger flow control strategies for urban rail transit networks

Urban rail traffic congestion is becoming increasingly serious due to the large traffic demands in modern cities. In order to ensure the safety and quality of station services in peak hours, it's necessary to adopt some reasonable and effective passenger flow control strategies. In this study, through considering the time-dependent passenger demands, a passenger flow control model based on the network-level system is explicitly developed. The passenger successive motion process is discretized by the modeling method. Systematically considering the coordinated relationship between traffic demands and strict capacity constraints (including station passing capacity, platform load capacity and train transport capacity), we establish a mixed integer linear programming model to minimize the total passenger waiting time (including passengers outside stations and on the platforms). The optimization software Cplex is adopted to solve the developed model, and a real network of Beijing urban railway is calibrated to verify the effectiveness of the suggested model. As a result, the proposed flow control strategies can provide detailed information about control stations, control durations and control intensities, and can effectively reduce the total waiting time and relieve the number of stranded passengers in the urban rail transit network.     

Performance analysis of an elevator system during up-peak

We model and analyze an elevator system during up-peak. We study the round-trip time, whose distribution depends strongly on the number of passengers waiting at the lobby, as well as the number of stops and the highest reversal floor. The distribution functions of the passenger queue length in the lobby, the round-trip time, the waiting time, the ride time and the journey time are derived.     

Adjustment boarding and alighting passengers on a bus transit line using qualitative information

Obtaining data to use in an urban public transport operation planning and analysis is problematic, particularly in urban bus transit lines. In an urban environment and for bus services, most ticketing methods can be used to record passengers getting on board but not getting off, and current methods are unable to make a proper adjustment of boardings and alightings based on the available data unless they do alighting counts. This paper presents a method whereby counts are made at fewer stops and qualitative information on alightings and/or vehicle loads between consecutive stops is used to make the boarding and alighting adjustment as a previous step to obtain the real origin and destination (O/D) of passengers allowing the O/D matrix calibration by using the loads between stops. Qualitative information can be obtained by the vehicle’s driver or an on board observer, avoiding the necessity of counting many stops in planning period. The method is applied to a real bus transit line in Malaga (Spain) and to a set of 50 different bus transit lines with number of stops ranging from 10 to 75. The results show that the proposed method reduces the adjustment errors with regard to traditional methods, such as Least Square Method, even in the situation where no qualitative information is used. When qualitative data is used on alightings and loadings, the reduction of the average error is over 50%.     

Estimating bus passenger waiting times from incomplete bus arrivals data

This paper considers the problem of estimating bus passenger waiting times at bus stops using incomplete bus arrivals data. This is of importance to bus operators and regulators as passenger waiting time is a key performance measure. Average waiting times are usually estimated from bus headways, that is, time gaps between buses. It is both time-consuming and expensive to measure bus arrival times manually so methods using automatic vehicle location systems are attractive; however, these systems do not usually provide 100% data coverage and missing data are problematical. The paper contributes to the general theory of estimating headway variance using incomplete data. Various methods for replacing missing buses or discarding spurious bus headways are compared and tested on different data sets.     

Steady state results for the M/M(a,b)/c batch-service system

The transportation system considered in this paper has a number of vehicles with capacity constraint, which take passengers from a source terminal to various destinations and return to the terminal. The trip times are considered to be independent and identically distributed random variables with a common exponential distribution. Passengers arrive at the terminal in accordance with a Poisson process. The system is operated under the following policy: when a vehicle is available and there are at least ‘a’ passengers waiting for service, then a vehicle is dispatched immediately. A recursive algorithm is derived to obtain the steady-state probability P(m, j) that there are m idle vehicles and j waiting passengers in the queue. Analytical expressions have been derived for passenger queue length distribution, average passenger queue length, the r-th moment of passenger waiting time in the queue, service batch size distribution and the average service batch size, all in terms of P(0,0).     

Determination of the number and locations of time points in transit schedule design — Case of a single run

An analytical model for the determination of the number and locations of time points as well as the amount of slack times in transit schedule design is developed. The model considers a bus route with a special passenger demand pattern in which all boarding passengers coordinate their arrivals at each stop in such a way that they never miss their intended bus, and therefore designing the schedule separately a single run at a time, becomes possible. The model employs the dynamic programming method to deal with the trade-offs among various cost components associated with the schedule quantitatively, and yet is flexible enough to incorporate the existing rules of thumb as well as transit operators' policies. Numerical examples that illustrate the applications of the model are given. The model, although not quite applicable to bus routes with general passenger demand patterns, is useful in the analysis of the contributing factors to the design of an economical, reliable, and operational transit schedule, and is likely to be adaptable for more realistic cases.     

Spectral analysis for performance evaluation in a bus network

This paper deals with the performance evaluation of a public transportation system in terms of waiting times at various connection points. The behaviour of a bus network is studied in the framework of Discrete Event Systems (DES). Two possible operating modes of buses can be observed at each connection stop: periodic and non-periodic mode. Two complementary tools, Petri nets and (max, +) algebra, are used to describe the network by a non-stationary linear state model. This one can be solved after solving the structural conflicts associated to the graphical representation. From the characteristic matrix of the mathematical model, we determine eigenvalues and eigenvectors that we use to evaluate the connection times of passengers. This work is finally illustrated with a numerical example.     

Cost optimal allocation of rail passenger lines

We consider the problem of cost optimal railway line allocation for passenger trains for the Dutch railway system. At present, the allocation of passenger lines by Dutch Railways is based on maximizing the number of direct travelers. This paper develops an alternative approach that takes operating costs into account. A mathematical programming model is developed which minimizes the operating costs subject to service constraints and capacity requirements. The model optimizes on lines, line types, routes, frequencies and train lengths. First, the line allocation model is formulated as an integer nonlinear programming model. This model is transformed into an integer linear programming model with binary decision variables. An algorithm is presented which solves the problem to optimality. The algorithm is based upon constraint satisfaction and a Branch and Bound procedure. The algorithm is applied to a subnetwork of the Dutch railway system for which it shows a substantial cost reduction. Further application and extension seem promising.     

Social forecasting for company planning: Brian C. TWISS (Ed.) Macmillan,London, 1982, xxv + 310 pages, £25.00

The transportation system considered in this paper has a number of vehicles with no capacity constraint, which take passengers from a source terminal to various destinations and return to the terminal. The trip times are considered to be independent and identically distributed random variables with a common exponential distribution. Passengers arrive at the terminal in accordance with a Poisson process. The system is operated under the following policy: when a vehicle is available and there are at least α passengers waiting for service, then a vehicle is dispatched immediately. The passenger queue length and waiting time distributions are obtained under steady-state conditions. System performance measures such as average passenger queue length and waiting time are then derived. A minimum average cost criterion is then used to determine the optimal fleet size and dispatching policy. This is a generalization of the results of Weiss for a single-vehicle system.     

A rolling stock circulation model for combining and splitting of passenger trains

This paper addresses the railway rolling stock circulation problem. Given the departure and arrival times as well as the expected numbers of passengers, we have to assign the rolling stock to the timetable services. We consider several objective criteria that are related to operational costs, service quality and reliability of the railway system.Our model is an extension of an existing rolling stock model for routing train units along a number of connected train lines. The extended model can also handle underway combining and splitting of trains.We illustrate our model by computational experiments based on instances of NS Reizigers, the main Dutch operator of passenger trains.     

乘客到达时间不确定的机场动态拼车策略与算法研究

网约车拼车服务作为共享经济领域重要应用,已成为国内外研究热点。针对机场在线拼车平台运营中乘客等待时间过长和车辆行驶成本较高的突出问题,本文提出前瞻式动态拼车匹配策略。该策略将未来随机到达乘客信息纳入当前已到达乘客的拼车匹配决策中,建立了乘客匹配与车辆路径联合优化两阶段随机规划模型。为了在动态环境中实时产生高质量的匹配与路径规划方案,首先基于贝叶斯估计压缩乘客随机到达情景空间,建立了问题的确定性近似最优模型。为了快速求解模型,提出基于订单目的地和乘客期望到达时间相似度的匹配规则,并以此开发改进的差分进化算法。最后,基于某拼车平台真实订单数据,通过对比测试验证了前瞻式匹配策略和改进差分进化算法的有效性与计算效率。     

Minimizing the passengers’ traveling time in the stop location problem

In this paper we consider the location of stops along the edges of an already existing public transportation network. The positive effect of new stops is given by the better access of the passengers to the public transport network, while the passengers’ traveling time increases due to the additional stopping activities of the trains, which is a negative effect for the passengers. The problem has been treated in the literature where the most common model is to cover all demand points with a minimal number of new stops. In this paper, we follow this line and seek for a set of new stops covering all demand points but instead of minimizing the number of new stops we minimize the additional passengers’ traveling time due to the new stops. For computing this additional traveling time we do not only take the stopping times of the vehicles but also acceleration and deceleration of the vehicles into account. We show that the problem is NP-hard, but we are able to derive a finite candidate set and two tractable IP formulations. For linear networks we show that the problem is polynomially solvable. We also discuss the differences to the common models from literature showing that minimizing the number of new stops does not necessarily lead to a solution with minimal additional traveling times for the passengers. We finally provide a case study showing that our new model decreases the traveling times for the passengers while still achieving the minimal number of new stops.     

A mathematical programming model for the bus deviation route problem

In small towns, or in those peripherical metropolitan areas in which the demand for public transportation is relatively low, the objectives of the bus route planner are different from those faced in highly congested networks. Some towns, also in Italy, are experimenting with urban public transportation systems where regular bus routes are designed which allow users located at specific points outside the main line to signal their presence to the bus driver, who then deviates from the main route to satisfy this demand. This way the bus line is a mixture between a regular line and a dial-a-ride system. The bus deviation route problem is concerned with the design problem which arises in planning the location of the demand points outside the line. A model is presented which takes into account both the advantage of passengers served by this deviation device and the disadvantage suffered by passengers on the bus, whose travel time increases during deviations, and by passengers downstream of the deviation whose waiting time also increases. Through some modeling assumption we are able to represent this problem as a mixed integer linear programming problem, whose relatively low dimension allows for exact solution through standard simplex-based branch and bound code. The proposed model has been applied to a real case and some results of this are presented and discussed.     

校车安排问题

探讨如何安排校车运行使得教师和工作人员尽量满意的问题.首先建立动态规划模型和选址规划模型,求出合理站点位置及其总距离.然后用归一法定义满意度与距离的函数关系,考虑各区域人数,建立选址规划模型.得到合理站点位置和总满意度.之后建立双目标非线性规划模型,利用量纲分析法给出权重,以此求出合理乘车位置和满意度.最后对问题进行推...     

Static target search path planning optimization with heterogeneous agents

Disruptions in airline operations can result in infeasibilities in aircraft and passenger schedules. Airlines typically recover aircraft schedules and disruptions in passenger itineraries sequentially. However, passengers are severely affected by disruptions and recovery decisions. In this paper, we present a mathematical formulation for the integrated aircraft and passenger recovery problem that considers aircraft and passenger related costs simultaneously. Using the superimposition of aircraft and passenger itinerary networks, passengers are explicitly modeled in order to use realistic passenger related costs. In addition to the common routing recovery actions, we integrate several passenger recovery actions and cruise speed control in our solution approach. Cruise speed control is a very beneficial action for mitigating delays. On the other hand, it adds complexity to the problem due to the nonlinearity in fuel cost function. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model. We show that the problem can be reformulated as conic quadratic mixed integer programming (CQMIP) problem which can be solved with commercial optimization software such as IBM ILOG CPLEX. Our computational experiments have shown that we could handle several simultaneous disruptions optimally on a four-hub network of a major U.S. airline within less than a minute on the average. We conclude that proposed approach is able to find optimal tradeoff between operating and passenger-related costs in real time.     

公交网络时刻表再协同设计的多目标优化模型

为了改善公交服务质量,公交运营者试图调整现有时刻表的发车时间,使不同线路的车次协同到达换乘站点以方便乘客换乘。针对此场景,研究了公交时刻表重新协同设计问题,提出了求解该问题的多目标模型。模型考虑了对发车间隔灵敏的乘客需求、灵活的车次协同到站方式和发车时间的规则性,分析了该多目标模型的特征和计算复杂性,表明本文研究的问题是NP-hard问题,且它的帕累托最优前沿是非凸的,设计了基于非支配排序的遗传算法求解模型。算例表明,与枚举算法相比,提出的求解算法在较短的时间内可获得高质量的帕累托解。     

System Regularity and Overtaking Rules in Bus Services

A detailed analysis on the effects of different overtaking rules upon scheduled and unscheduled urban bus services was carried out. The analysis used computer models, which were developed to simulate bus operation strategies with or without overtaking and possibly parallel loading.Permitting overtaking in unscheduled services was found to reduce the journey time of the buses but resulted in a higher degree of irregularity in the service. Scheduled services, in contrast, appeared to be more reliable when overtaking was permitted. In such services, permission for overtaking reduced the waiting times of passengers as a result of faster journeys and a more regular service.     

几种电梯运行模式的比较及应用

通过对上班高峰时段的电梯运行情况进行分析,以"最后被运送的乘客的等待时间最短"的"最大最小"原则作为其评价指标,以"电梯运行周期与运行总时间之比等于电梯在一个周期内运送的乘客数与乘客总数之比"的"比例"原则为依据,对高层楼宇中人员流动高峰时段的几种电梯运行方案建立了数学模型进行描述与比较,找到了电梯停靠楼层的最佳方案,并对北京大学第三医院外科楼的运行方案做出定量的数学证明.     

高速铁路旅客满意度研究:服务接触理论视角

作为旅客重要的出行方式,高速铁路既面临着市场竞争,又面临着旅客不断增长的服务质量要求。基于服务接触理论形成高速铁路客运服务接触链,从理论上构建高速铁路旅客满意度模型,研究影响旅客满意度的关键接触点。运用SEM定量分析潜变量间的路径系数,对该理论模型的路径假设进行检验。结果表明:四个阶段的服务接触直接影响旅客满意度,间接影响旅客忠诚度;四个服务接触阶段对旅客满意度的影响效应从高到低依次是列车、候车、出站、进站;各服务接触阶段对旅客忠诚度的影响存在明显差异。