Collaborative Control Strategies For Metro Train Operation And Passenger Flow Characteristics At Peak Hours

In the context of the normalization of massive passenger flows during peak hours,reducing operational safety risks and improving passenger service quality are of great significance to the sustainable development of urban rail transit.Train operation adjustment and passenger flow control are two effective methods.First,spatio-temporal characteristics of passenger flows and train capacities at peak hours on an urban rail transit line are analyzed.Subsequently,the model of passenger flow control strategy coordinated by multiple stations is constructed,which aims to reduce and balance passenger waiting time.Finally,train operation adjustment is introduced,and the collaborative control strategy of train capacities and passenger flows is going to be studied from the respect of improving safety and service quality.The main research work and conclusions are as follows:(1)Study on spatio-temporal characteristics of passenger flows and and train capacities.By analyzing the distribution of passenger flows of urban rail trainsit,it is concluded that peak-hour passenger flows are overwhelming in a short period,and are unbalanced in different directions and different sections as well.Facing with the contradiction between supply and demand due to unbalanced passenger flows,several methods related to train operation and passenger load control are represented to achieve the matching of train capacities and passenger demands.Finally,passenger flow control,train depature interval adjustment and skip-stop pattern are proposed to be futher studied.(2)Study on the strategy of passenger flow control coordinated by multiple stations.Based on the single direction of large passenger flows and given train timetable on an oversaturated urban rail transit line,considering the time perceived coefficient of passengers waiting outside platforms,a passenger flow control optimization model is constructed,which minimizes the total perceived passenger waiting time and standard deviation of average passenger waiting time at each station.Then the Epsilon algorithm is proposed to obtain the Pareto optimal set of the multi-objective model.The case study shows that in order to reduce the standard deviation of average passenger waiting time at each station from 4.22 min to 1.27 min,the total perceived passenger waiting time increases by 2.30%.This is because upstream stations are going to adopt passenger flow control strategy,which increases passenger waiting time outside platforms at these stations.Moreovere,sensitivity analysises show that reducing the maximum passenger flow control rate and expanding the range of passenger flow control stations can better balance the passenger waiting time at each station.Because low passenger flow control rate is effective to ensure a certain part of passengers who can board trains,and expanding the range of passenger flow control stations can achive more train capacities which is available to be redistributed.(3)Study on collaborative control strategy of train capacities and passenger flows.In addition to optimizing passenger flow control strategy,the adjustment of train departure interval and skip-stop pattern is considered as well.In the objective function,except for total perceived passenger waiting time,the train load factor and passenger accumulation outside platforms are introduced to formulate two safety-related indicators.The collaborative optimization model of train capacities and passenger flows is constructed,and a hybrid heuristic algorithm combining tabu search and GUROBI solver is proposed to sove the model.Case studies show that the passenger flow control method can reduce the number of sections where train load factor exceeds 110%because the essense of this method is to reduce the volume of passengers waiting at platforms.Besides,train operation adjustment performs well in lowering the density of passenger accumulation outside platforms and decreasing passenger waiting time.This is because the adjusted train departure interval and skip-stop pattern make train capacities more adaptable to passenger demand.Comparely,the proposed collaborative control strategy of train capacities and passenger flows has the best performance in enhancing operationl safety and passenger service quality.