Models of bus boarding and alighting dynamics
Author
Abstract
Understanding the dynamics of boarding/alighting activities and its impact on bus dwell
times is crucial to improving bus service levels. However, research is limited as conventional
data collection methods are both time and labour intensive. In this paper, we present
the first use of smart card data to study passenger boarding/alighting behaviour and its
impact on bus dwell time. Given the nature of these data, we focus on passenger activity
time and do not account for the time necessary to open and close doors. We study single
decker, double decker and articulated buses and identify the specific effects of floor/
entrance type, number of activities and occupancy on both boarding and alighting dynamics.
A linear relationship between average boarding and alighting times and their respective
standard deviations is also found, whereas the variability of boarding and alighting time
decreases with the number of passengers boarding and alighting. After observing the
cumulative boarding/alighting processes under different occupancy conditions, we propose
a new model to estimate passenger activity time, by introducing critical occupancy – a
parameter incorporating the friction between boarding/alighting and on-board passengers.
We conduct regression analyses with the proposed and another popular model for simultaneous
boarding/alighting processes, finding that the critical occupancy plays a significant
role in determining the regime of boarding and alighting processes and the overall activity
time. Our results provide potential implications for practice and policy, such as identifying
optimal vehicle type for a particular route and modelling transit service reliability.
General note
Articulo de publicacion SCOPUS
Patrocinador
Land Transport Authority of Singapore
CEPAS
CONICYT
Identifier
URI: https://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/126576
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2014.09.007
Quote Item
Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 447–460
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