On the Development of a Metro Line Simulation Model for Passenger Analysis

Abstract

Metro systems have been built in many densely populated cities. Passenger flow of metro service is huge and the ridership of metro system is a major concern of both system’s engineers and planners. Studying the factors including headway time, dwell time, station capacity, train operation speed, car doors operation mechanism etc. may provide insights to transit services and station position planning. This study employs a simulation approach which can model passenger flow in metro lines for ridership analysis in order to assist metro line planning.
This project provides a simulation model for metro line. The model is comprised of three modules: 1) core modules including module for trains, 2) module for passengers and module for door controlling, 3) assistant modules including module for first-in-first-out rules (FIFO), and I/O (input and output) modules. This model simulates an operation mechanism of a metro line, and could provide the passenger number in stations and trains for detailed analysis. Those results give an account for the service of every station, and provide information to analyse the headway of trains for the controllers of metro system and the influence of dwell time. Such information also helps metro station controllers to decide whether or not those stations are crowded by understanding passenger inflow and outflow.
This simulation model is developed based on the processing model library implemented in AnyLogic - a computer simulation software package. It can simulate the process of passengers and trains’ behaviours in a metro line. Passenger flow data of Shanghai metro line is used to verify the simulation’s result. Parametric study has then been done to analyse: 1) the influence of headway, 2) train acceleration, 3) the number of passengers in each station during a research time period, 4) dwell time.
The model has also been adopted to demonstrate the influence of a station’s passenger arrival rate. When adding a new station into an existing metro line, the number of passengers entering the said station should be an attribute in determining the train services. In other words, the model enables the study on the influence of putting down a new station on an existing metro line.
This research focuses on a metro line by a simulation model based on network model. Headway, train’s capacity, every station’s arrival rate of passengers, dwell time, etc. are the inputs of this simulation model developed in this research. Its outputs include: 1) factor analysis: how the level of service of stations changes under different factor groups; 2) dwell time analysis: how the level of service changes under different dwell times and the maximum doors-reopening times; 3) incident analysis: how the number of passengers in stations changes when a line halts its service for a short period due to an accident, and how the level of services is impaired when compared to their normal state (the level of service before this accident occurs); 4) new stations’ influences on the level of service of stations in this metro line; 5) when a huge group of passengers enters a station, how level of service changes in this station and its neighbouring stations. The result of research based on this simulation model can provide insight into the planning of new stations.

Date of Award	21 Sept 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Siu Ming LO (Supervisor)