Optimizing Passenger Flows in a Multimodal Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Station Using Microscopic Traffic Simulation

Abstract

AbstractPersonal rapid transit (PRT) systems are on-demand transport systems in which small autonomous vehicles travel on their own dedicated infrastructure. Passengers travel alone or in small groups in a vehicle without intermediate stops to their requested destination. Typically, they are considered as medium capacity systems of 5,000–20,000 passengers/h. This paper sets the focus on the optimal passenger guidance within PRT stations to maximize station capacity and in particular in the queue formation for the passengers within the PRT station. The queueing processes are modelled with a microscopic traffic simulation software. The examined scenario is a train station at which the passengers form queues before boarding to the PRT system. Two types of queues are examined: An S-shaped and a funnel-shaped queue. To determine the maximum number of the dispatched passengers of the PRT station, the percentage of the passengers alighting from the train is increased incrementally. The results of the simulation show that both queue types reach the same maximum number of dispatched passengers per hour. This indicates that there is a certain likelihood that station capacity is independent of the shape of queues within the station, but it depends rather on availability of vehicles within the station. We draw this conclusion from a visual observation of the model and a rough comparison with values from a previous study. Therefore, there is more potential to increase PRT system capacities in the optimization of the PRT vehicle-side processes in the station, rather than in the optimization of passenger-side queues in the station.KeywordsPersonal rapid transitPRTStation designVISSIMMicroscopic simulationMicrosimulationCapacity analysisPassenger flow optimisation