Modelling waiting time for passengers transferring from rail to buses

Abstract

This paper develops a mathematical model to calculate the average waiting time for passengers transferring from rail transit to buses based on the statistical analysis of primary data collected in Beijing. An important part of the average waiting time modelling is to analyse the distributions of passenger arrival rates. It is shown that the lognormal and gamma distributions have the best fit for direct transfer and non-direct transfer passengers, respectively. Subsequently, an average waiting time model for transferring passengers is developed based on passenger arrival rate distributions. Furthermore, case studies are conducted for two scenarios with real and estimated data, resulting in relative errors of −3.69% and −3.77%, respectively. Finally, the paper analyses the impacts of bus headway, the headway of rail cars, and the proportion of direct transfer passengers on average waiting time.