Toward dynamic regulation of bidirectional automatic fare gates: A macro-to-micro simulation approach

Abstract

While bidirectional automatic fare gates (BAFGs) serve as important tools for mitigating the congestion of passengers in subway stations, most of BAFGs function merely as single-directional automatic fare gates (AFGs) in most cities of China and other countries. This paper proposes a pioneering work on the dynamic regulation problem of BAFGs. We build a macro-to-micro model which simulates the movement of passengers in stations from both the macroscopic and microscopic perspectives. The system dynamics based macromodel simulates the macroscopic movement of passengers in stations, while the social force based micromodel simulates the microscopic movement of passengers. Benefitting from the negative feedback regulation mechanism of the system dynamics, we adjust different number of BAFGs according to the congestion extent of the passenger flow on the platform in the macromodel, and change the pedestrian flowline in the micromodel to ensure that there is no new conflict produced by the regulation scheme. We conduct case studies on Dawanglu station and Jiangtai station, Beijing, China, and propose optimized configurations and dynamic regulation scheme of BAFGs accordingly. The simulation results show that the macro-to-micro model not only significantly improves both the BAFGs’ efficiency and the passengers’ efficiency, but also exhibits a high generalization ability towards different types of subway stations. Our study benefits the subway operation and management, and is conducive to sustainable urban development.