Identifying Factors Impacting Customers’ Perceived Waiting Time in High Density Passenger Flow Waiting Areas

Abstract

The pedestrian waiting area is a kind of important pedestrian traffic facility. According to pedestrians’ perceived waiting time, this paper evaluates the level of service (LOS) of waiting areas with high density pedestrian flow. After a detailed analysis of the passenger survey data collected in the waiting areas of the 2010 world EXPO in Shanghai, the paper introduces a perception factor φ as the evaluation index of waiting time. That aims to solve the problem of no comparability of the passenger’ waiting time in different waiting areas. An analysis is conducted on the difference of the perception factors under different population categories and facility environment. On the basis of this analysis, this paper develops a regression model to analyze how the perception factor is related to the passenger's attributes (age, gender, number of partners, visiting times) and the objective environment (weather, waiting facilities, waiting information available, onsite interactive program, the number of people closely around). Then, the relationship between the occurrence of the passengers’ boredom sense in waiting and the perception factor φ is established. Consequently, it is found that φ =1.2 was a critical point at which the passengers’ boredom sense increases significantly. The data also shows a negative correlation between the perception factor and the LOS.