Passenger Arrivals Research Articles

An analysis of elevator operation in moderate height buildings—I: A single elevator

Approximate analytic methods are used to describe how the equilibrium trip time of an elevator depends upon the physical characteristics of the elevator, the passenger demand, and possible strategies of operation. The analysis is directed particularly toward elevators in buildings of moderate height (10–15 floors) at traffic levels such that the elevator is seldom idle or fully loaded. Part I describes the model and the general method for estimating means and variances of trip time if a group of floors is served by only one elevator and passenger arrivals define a homogeneous Poisson process.

Baggage Claim Area Congestion at Airports: An Empirical Model of Mechanized Claim Device Performance

Although baggage handling is a major airport expense and congestion of luggage claim areas is quite common, knowledge of how baggage claim devices perform their task under congested conditions is virtually nonexistent. In order to bridge this gap this paper describes a model that, for different demand conditions, can predict the performance of a claim device depending on its characteristics. The demand conditions considered include aircraft size, lag between arrival of passengers and bags, and the fraction of passengers that transfer. The characteristics of the claim device that affect performance are frontage length, cycle time, and maximum throughput. The proposed model can predict the accumulation of passengers around the claim device, the time it takes to handle a planeload, and the average passenger service time as the demand conditions and claim device characteristics change. Although the model is deterministic and makes a number of simplifying assumptions, it is also easy to apply if the arrival pattern of bags and people to the claim area is known. Thus, if predictive and/or normative models for these arrivals become available, fairly simple and realistic procedures to study a number of baggage claim area design and operation issues could be developed around the model. The model, which is based on data gathered at the American Airline, National Airline, and Western Airline terminals at San Francisco International Airport, was able to reproduce the observed light congestion phenomena quite well; especially in the case that consisted of a rather large planeload. Unfortunately, lack of resources prevented us to observe a variety of terminals, including situations with much congestion and many bags per passenger. Because of this, further refinements and/or fine tuning of the formulas is definitely recommended.

Evaluation of the handling capacity of multi-car lift systems

The conventional procedure used in the traffic design of lift systems is to determine the average number of passengers that can be transported in a fixed period of time. An analytic model, based upon Poisson distributed passenger arrivals, for this handling capacity is given. The resulting design equations are implicit functions of the lift system handling capacity and a functional iteration procedure based upon the contraction mapping theorem is proposed for actual lift system design.

Random vehicle dispatching with options and optimal fleet size

A dispatching problem with random availability of vehicles and options to send rented vehicles is considered. We assume passenger arrivals to be described by a pure-birth process. Such a problem is analytically attractive and is shown to have practical applications in vehicle dispatching models. An average cost criterion is used to determine firm's fleet size and option (renting) strategy.

Derivation of the mean highest reversal floor and expected number of stops in lift systems

To evaluate the design equations for multi-car lift systems it is necessary to obtain values for the average highest reversal floor ( H ) and the expected number of stops ( S ) of the individual lift cars. This paper derives both these important parameters for the most general traffic condition of interfloor traffic and unequal floor demand and population. The specific cases of up-peak and down-peak traffic conditions are then shown to be special cases. Passenger arrivals at the main terminal are assumed to be Poisson distributed, although the more conservative assumption of uniformly distributed arrivals is used for comparative purposes.

The design of an efficient elevator operating system

A method is developed for finding an efficient operating policy for an office building elevator system. The method was applied to a particular eleven story building in which there were four elevator shafts. A queuing model was formulated in which the characteristics of passenger arrivals and destinations were time variable. The objective involved the minimization of the weighted sum of ratios of actual to minimum possible travel time between all pairs of floors. Simulation was used to analyze several logical routing policies for each of two methods in which demand information was used to alter the elevator route. The best policy was found to be almost twice as efficient as most of the other policies which were studied and over 25 times more efficient than another seemingly logical operating policy.

Control of bus headways by traffic signal timing methods

Bus bunching causes uneven passenger loadings and increases the average passenger waiting time. Bunching is caused by an unstable relationship between delay in the actual bus arrival time and passenger loading time requirements. An appropriate mathematical representation of this process is provided, and the general mathematical requirements for stabilizing the process is described. It is shown how if the time of arrival is known at certain locations, the traffic signals may be appropriately timed to remove this instability and enable the buses to adhere to their schedule with greater precision. An example demonstrating the performance of the algorithm on a particular bus route is provided.

A Behavioural Explanation of the Association Between Bus and Passenger Arrivals at a Bus Stop

The times of arrivals of passengers and departures of buses have been observed at ten bus stops in suburban London. The different bus stops were observed at different times of the day, but the observations at each were repeated at the same time on each of eight different days. Due to the predictability of the bus services, passengers' waiting times were observed to be about 30 per cent less than they would have been had the passengers arrived at random times. An explanation of this involves considering passengers to be of three types: a proportion q whose arrival time is causally coincidental with the bus, a proportion p(1 − q) who arrive at the optimal time (the time at which the expected waiting time is smallest), and a proportion (1 − p)(1 − q) who arrive at random. It was found that p is positively correlated with the expected gain from arriving at the optimal time as opposed to arriving at random. Furthermore, p was found to be larger at those bus stops observed in the peak than at those observed in the off-peak. A number of other results relating various parameters of the bus services are also given.

On Scheduling Some Transport Systems with Discrete‐Time Passenger Arrivals

A transportation system is operated with one vehicle and N service points. At one terminal of the system passengers arrive in groups only at discrete points in time; at the other service points, riders enter steadily at constant rates. Vehicle travel times between adjacent service points are random variables. The problem addressed in this paper is that of devising the operating strategy which minimizes average waiting time for passengers of the system. Using different kinds of probabilistic analysis, we obtain optimal policy statements both when the discrete‐time arrivals occur at fixed instants of equal spacing, and when these arrivals occur in Poisson fashion. Some specific applications are discussed.

Operating Characteristics of a Simple Shuttle under Local Dispatching Rules

We treat a transportation system with Poisson passenger arrivals at each of two terminals and a carrier of capacity one that shuttles back and forth between the terminals. We study the consequences of the control decision: how long should the carrier wait empty at a terminal? This dispatch decision is made without knowledge of the queue at the other terminal. Exact and approximate expressions are obtained for the number of carrier trips per unit time and average queue size at each terminal. They are used to show that it is best never to hold the carrier at the slow terminal and not to randomize in the decision process. Further, we show that holding the carrier at the fast terminal sometimes reduces both trip rate and the sum of the average queue sizes.

Terminal del aeropuerto de Colonia - Alemania Federal

This terminal has two basements, ground floor and five higher floor levels. The lower basement has reserve water storage tanks heating and air conditioning plant and other services. The top basement contains telephone exchanges, transformer plant and further ancillary facilities. Passenger arrivals are located on the ground floor, and this includes customs and traffic police offices, distinguished passengers reception rooms, an auditorium, luggage distribution installations and waiting rooms. The second floor is devoted to passenger departure facilities, which includes a reception hall, waiting zones, information centre, offices, and the desks of the air companies. On the third floor there are two independent restaurants, for national and international flights. The fourth floor contains air traffic control services, including a metereological office, and on the fifth floor there is a visitors coffee shop and a large terrace.

Swedish Passenger Arrivals in New York, 1820-1850

Swedish Passenger Arrivals in New York, 1820-1850

Simulation of Elevator System for World's Tallest Buildings

The design of the world's two tallest buildings, each 110 stories high, calls for a unique elevator system utilizing 95 local and express passenger elevators per building. Conventional elevator systems' evaluation criteria were supplemented by traffic data and the use of simulation to determine accurately the expected service levels throughout the building. In order to measure the design system's capabilities and to develop and evaluate changes in the elevator specifications, a second-by-second simulation of an entire tower building's elevator operation has been developed, programmed, validated, and applied. Data were collected to develop expected passenger arrival and departure distributions and to determine elevator characteristics—acceleration and deceleration, loading and unloading times. Traffic input data for each of the individual local and express elevators was generated by a series of programs. The computations and logic of the group supervisory control systems for local and express banks are incorporated in simulation programs.