Rail Transit Passenger Flow Research Articles

Passenger flow prediction at rail transit station entrances and exits: A case study of Beijing

Accurate prediction of passenger flow at station entrances and exits is a hot topic in rail transit passenger flow prediction work, and provides important support for the refined and humanized design of stations. This paper comprehensively considers factors such as land use around the station, traffic connection conditions, station attributes and attractiveness, and constructs a two-layer passenger flow prediction model, including traffic zone layer passenger flow prediction based on multivariate nonlinear regression and entrance and exit layer passenger flow prediction based on the CRITIC method. Based on available data, the model first predicts the total passenger flow at all entrances and exits in the traffic zone, and then distributes the total passenger flow to each entrance and exit of the traffic zone. Different types of rail transit stations were randomly selected to verify the effectiveness of the model. The results show that the error between the model prediction value and the actual value of the daily entrance and exit volume is within , and the average error is , which has a high prediction accuracy.

State-dependent multi-agent discrete event simulation for urban rail transit passenger flow

Urban rail transit passenger flow modeling is the foundation of urban rail transit planning, design, and operation. The motivation of this paper is to accurately and efficiently simulate passenger flow dynamics in urban rail transit systems. To this end, we propose a State-dependent Multi-agent Discrete Event Simulation (SdMaDES). The state-dependence (or congestion-dependence) means that the service abilities (or travel times) of bottleneck facilities (e.g. platform screen doors and transfer corridors) are not constant and they interact with the congestion dynamics. Specifically, we first establish a modular Multi-agent Discrete Event Simulation (MaDES), which includes four types of modules (passenger, train, station, and network modules) and three types of agents (passenger, train, and station agents). The logical connections and event-triggering modes between the modules are analyzed and defined, and thirty types of events are designed. The state-dependence is then captured by an Improved Social Force Model (ISFM), which adds an autonomous obstacle avoidance mechanism. The ISFM reproduces passenger movement behavior within bottleneck facilities of urban rail transit systems at the microscopic level. These state-dependent functions or general rules are explicitly formulated by fitting the results of ISFM and are subsequently applied to the proposed MaDES model, resulting in the SdMaDES. This integration aims to enhance the accuracy of the simulation. We conducted a real case from the Chengdu Metro network. Some interesting results are found. (a) The maximum number of boarding passengers in a train carriage is a complex nonlinear function that is dependent on the state (density inside the train carriage). This challenges the linear function commonly utilized in most studies. (b) Compared to the actual data, the proposed SdMaDES model shows a cumulative error of 9.85% after data smoothing, while the conventional MaDES model exhibits a much higher cumulative error of 21.9% after data smoothing. (c) As the overall traffic demand level increases, the gap between the two simulation models’ results is getting wider and wider due to the amplified nonlinear impact of congestion.

Study on Urban Rail Transit Passenger Flow Analysis and Economic Improvement Strategy

This study takes the analysis of traffic passenger flow from the perspective of commuting as the research object, and selects Suzhou rail transit as a thematic research case. Based on the analysis of the "Annual Commuter Monitoring Report of China's Major Cities 2022" and the research of Suzhou rail transit, the following conclusions are drawn: First, rail construction should take the service of commuter passenger flow as the core, emphasize the fit between line direction and commuting demand, so as to improve economy. Second, Improving the leading role of rail transit and the efficiency of the whole process is the key, and attention should be paid to the improvement of the transportation mode structure and the efficiency of "door-to-door" service. Third, rail transit should guide urban development, pay attention to function matching, in particular, attention should be paid to the balance between employment and housing of rail lines and guaranteed housing for youth, so as to promote the economic development and community stability of the city. Finally, the paper puts forward some measures to improve rail commuter coverage, including the establishment of an interactive monitoring platform between rail construction and urban development, so as to support the improvement of rail commuter coverage.

Short-time Prediction of Urban Rail Transit Passenger Flow

Short-time Prediction of Urban Rail Transit Passenger Flow

Research on the Classification of Rail Transit Stations and Passenger Flow Patterns—A Case from Xi’an, China

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has been promoted and implemented worldwide through the efficient integration of rail transit stations and land use. However, the interactions between stations and the surrounding catchment areas (CAs) are characterized by different features of the built environment and regional development. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a quantitative classification method for rail transit stations based on the built environment within a CA and to identify the passenger flow characteristics of different types of stations to develop targeted planning and design policies. In this study, Line 1 and Line 2 within the third ring road of Xi’an City were taken as the objects, and a station classification system was constructed by taking station traffic levels and different building functions within the CA as the classification factors. Secondly, indicators of the built environment, such as six different types of functions, were calculated through refined vector modeling, and 30 typical stations were typologically analyzed. Furthermore, 10 typical types—totaling 11 stations—were selected for passenger flow monitoring, and the passenger flow characteristics of the different types of stations were summarized in terms of the dimensions of stations and exits. Finally, the correlations between the indicators of the built environment and passenger traffic for different functions were quantified. This study provides a basis for the future optimization of stations and the built environment, as well as station design and management.

Improved Long-Term Forecasting of Passenger Flow at Rail Transit Stations Based on an Artificial Neural Network

When new rail stations or lines are planned, long-term planning for decades to come is required. The short-term passenger flow prediction is no longer of practical significance, as it only takes a few factors that affect passenger flow into consideration. To overcome this problem, we propose several long-term factors affecting the passenger flow of rail transit in this paper. We also create a visual analysis of these factors using ArcGIS and construct a long-term passenger flow prediction model for rail transit based on a class neural network using an SPSS Modeler. After optimizing relevant parameters, the prediction accuracy reaches 94.6%. We compare the results with other models and find that the neural network model has a good performance in predicting long-term rail transit passenger flow. Finally, the factors affecting passenger flow are ranked in terms of importance. It is found that among these factors, bicycles available for connection have the biggest influence on the passenger flow of rail stations.

Unsupervised Learning-Based Exploration of Urban Rail Transit Passenger Flow and Travel Pattern Mining

This study delves into the realm of urban rail transit systems, leveraging unsupervised learning techniques to analyze passenger flow characteristics and unearth travel patterns. Focused on the dynamic and complex nature of urban rail networks, the research utilizes extensive datasets, primarily derived from Automated Fare Collection (AFC) systems, to provide a comprehensive analysis of passenger behaviors and movement trends. Employing advanced algorithms like DBSCAN, the study categorizes passengers into distinct groups, including tourists, shoppers, thieves, commuters, and station staff. These classifications reveal intricate patterns in travel behaviors, significantly contributing to a deeper understanding of urban transit dynamics. The findings offer valuable insights into peak travel times, popular routes, and station congestion, highlighting potential areas for operational improvements and infrastructure development. The study’s application of unsupervised learning in analyzing vast, unstructured data sets a precedent in urban transportation research, showcasing the potential of artificial intelligence in enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of urban transit systems. The insights garnered are pivotal not only for optimizing current operations but also for shaping future expansion and adaptation strategies, ensuring urban rail systems continue to meet the evolving needs of growing urban populations.

Urban rail transit passenger flow prediction with ResCNN-GRU based on self-attention mechanism

With the development of modern cities, urban rail transit has become an indispensable part of residents' travelling mode, and accurate prediction of urban rail transit passenger flow is particularly important. However, due to the non-linearity and non-stability of passenger flow, the low quality of big data and the lack of data make it more and more difficult to predict the passenger flow of urban rail transit. In this paper, we propose a unique model structure that ingeniously integrates Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) with fused residual network connections, and a self-attention mechanism. The design of this model is primarily to effectively handle complex and low-quality data, which is often prevalent in passenger flow prediction scenarios. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed model, we used data from the Beijing urban rail transit in 2016 for prediction. In the experiments, we performed comparison study and ablation study. The experimental results show that the model proposed in this paper has significantly improved prediction accuracy in both horizontal and vertical comparisons. This outcome substantiates that the proposed model can not only effectively handle complex and low-quality data but also extract short-term features and long-term dependency features of passenger flow well, thereby achieving more accurate predictions.

Short-term Passenger Flow Prediction of Urban Rail Transit based on ARIMA Model

Urban rail transit is very important in modern urban transportation, which meets the needs of People's Daily travel. This paper aims to introduce the ARIMA model into the short-term passenger flow forecast of urban rail transit, analyze its principle and application method, and build ARIMA model combined with AFC data to forecast short-term passenger flow of urban rail transit. Through the research and improvement of ARIMA model, it is anticipated that it would give urban rail transport operators more precise and trustworthy short-term passenger flow forecasting capabilities, so as to realize more intelligent and efficient operation of urban rail transit system. In this study, the ARIMA model was established, and rigorous scientific methods such as residual test, autocorrelation function (ACF) and partial autocorrelation function (PACF) test, and comparison of predicted value and real value were adopted to conduct tests step by step according to the experimental process. Finally, it was confirmed that the excellent prediction accuracy of the ARIMA prediction model used in this paper, can provide accurate prediction results, and can be used in practical scenarios.

A Passenger Flow Prediction Method Using SAE-GCN-BiLSTM for Urban Rail Transit

To address the problems of existing passenger flow prediction methods such as low accuracy, inadequate learning of spatial features of station topology, and inability to apply to large networks, a SAE-GCN-BiLSTM-based passenger flow forecasting method for urban rail transit is proposed. First, the external features are extracted layer by layer using stacked autoencoder (SAE). Then, graph convolutional network (GCN) is used to capture the spatial features of station topology, and bi-directional long and short-term memory network (BiLSTM) is used to extract the bi-directional temporal features, realizing the extraction of the spatio-temporal features. Finally, external features and spatio-temporal features are fused for accurate prediction of urban rail transit passenger flow. The experimental results show that the proposed method is higher than several other advanced models in the evaluation indexes under different granularities, indicating that the model effectively develops the accuracy and robustness of urban rail transit passenger flow prediction.

Dynamic Evaluation Method for Mutation Degree of Passenger Flow in Urban Rail Transit

When urban rail transit is affected by interference, the fluctuation pattern of passenger flow undergoes mutation, which is not conducive to its operational safety and sustainable development. The more intense the mutation in the passenger flow, the greater the impact on the network and operations. Therefore, it is necessary to measure and evaluate the mutation degree of the urban rail transit passenger flow. In this study, we clarify the definition of the mutation degree of urban rail transit passenger flow and construct an evaluation index system for the mutation degree of passenger flow from two dimensions: horizontal mutation amplitude and vertical mutation amplitude. Based on the catastrophe theory, an evaluation model of the mutation degree was constructed. Using this evaluation method, abbreviated as CDCT, the level division of the mutation degree at different time intervals under different interference scenarios can be obtained, achieving a dynamic evaluation of the mutation degree of passenger flow. Finally, taking the passenger flow data of the Suzhou rail transit as an example, the mutational fluctuation of passenger flow affected by interference is analyzed, and the evaluation results of the mutation degree of passenger flow are obtained. The analysis results show that the CDCT evaluation method can better reflect the dynamic changes in the mutation degree throughout the process under the influence of the mutational passenger flow.

Research on the Influence of Weather Factors on Urban Rail Transit Passenger Flow

In recent years, cities have been increasingly confronted with frequent and severe extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, high temperatures, and strong winds. These extreme weather conditions not only impact urban transportation operations but also directly affect passengers' travel patterns and behaviors. In this context, gaining a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which weather factors influence urban subway passenger flow becomes crucial. This study aims to investigate the relationship between passenger flow and weather factors, and provide valuable insights for urban rail transit management to enhance proactive decision-making. To achieve this research objective, we first establish a framework for studying the impact of weather on passenger flow. Based on this framework, an analysis is conducted using passenger flow data and weather data from Beijing Metro Line 4. The findings of this study reveal significant effects of different weather factors on subway passenger flow. Increasing severity of weather conditions and higher wind speeds have a negative influence on passenger flow, leading to a decrease in ridership. Conversely, a significant positive correlation is observed between the highest temperature and subway passenger flow, indicating that as the highest temperature rises, the passenger volume also increases.

Prediction of Inbound and Outbound Passenger Flow in Urban Rail Transit Based on Spatio-Temporal Attention Residual Network

Passenger flow prediction is a critical approach to ensure the effective functioning of urban rail transit. However, there are few studies that combine multiple influencing factors for short-term passenger flow prediction. It is also a challenge to accurately predict passenger flow at all stations in the line at the same time. To overcome the above limitations, a deep learning-based method named ST-RANet is proposed, which consists of three spatio-temporal modules and one external module. The model is capable of predicting inbound and outbound passenger flow for all stations within the network simultaneously. We model the spatio-temporal data in terms of three temporal characteristics, including closeness, period, and trend. For each characteristic, we construct a spatio-temporal module that innovatively integrates the attention mechanisms into the middle of residual units and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to extract and learn spatio-temporal features. Subsequently, the results of the three modules are integrated using a parameter matrix method, which allows for dynamic aggregation based on data. The integration results are further combined with external factors, such as holidays and meteorological information, to obtain passenger flow prediction values for each station. The proposed model is validated using real data from Beijing Subway, and optimized parameters are applied for 30-min granularity passenger flow predictions. Comparing the performance against 5 baseline models and verifying with data from multiple lines, the results indicate that the proposed ST-RANet model shows the best results. It is demonstrated that the method proposed in this paper has high prediction accuracy and good applicability.

Passenger Flow Forecast for Low Carbon Urban Transport Based on Bi-Level Programming Model

<p>In the context of low-carbon city development, this paper further implements a rail transit passenger flow forecasting method to optimize energy consumption by combining the MMA allocation model with a two-tier planning model for carbon emission control. Through this approach, this paper not only fills the gap of rail transportation planning theories and methods compatible with low-carbon city development, but also emphasizes the importance of energy consumption in transportation planning. Based on a two-tier planning model, this paper considers the Starkberg game between multi-modal and multi-type passenger flow forecasting of rail transit and CO2 emissions of integrated transportation systems. By optimizing the allocation of users in the transportation network from the perspective of both users and planners, while optimizing the CO2 emissions of the integrated transportation system, the dual optimization of energy consumption and environmental benefits is achieved. The method will also be tested in Shanghai, and this paper will comparatively study three different carbon emission control schemes. By assigning passenger flows to the entire transportation system network in Shanghai based on information from the Fourth Integrated Transport Survey, including passenger flows on each road in the road network, passenger flows on each rail line, and characteristic indicators, this paper provides a reliable data base. This study provides a solid foundation for planning the layout of rail transit in a low-carbon mode and makes a positive contribution to sustainable urban development by optimizing energy consumption.</p> <p> </p>

Short-term urban rail transit passenger flow forecasting based on fusion model methods using univariate time series

Global urbanization has made the urban rail transit system an essential service for a growing population. To help urban rail transit stations design optimal operational plans, previous studies have devoted extensive efforts to passenger flow forecasting, especially short-term predictions. By considering the complex pattern of passenger flow, previous research investigated the feasibility of machine learning (ML) methods on different data features and found the limited application of a single ML method. Based on the dynamic historical passenger flow data at an urban rail station, this study proposes an ML-fusion strategy to enhance prediction accuracy, including data aggregation, time series forecasting model selection, and fusion model strategy. First, this study aggregates the data into working days, weekends, and hourly time series for single model development. Based on the predictive performance of single model development, this study selects XGBoost, AdaBoost, and LightGBM from the widely used ML-method pool. To overcome prediction errors caused by the discrepancy between characteristics of passenger flow and single prediction models, the proposed ML-fusion model combines single forecasting models with dynamically predicted passenger flow to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the prediction. Based on the experimental results, the mean absolute error is 1.54, and the regression coefficient is 0.99, which is in close agreement with unity, which validates that the proposed ML-fusion method has displayed superiority over all other single models tested both in accuracy and stability.

Prediction and Impact Analysis of Passenger Flow in Urban Rail Transit in the Postpandemic Era

In the postpandemic era, exploring the relationship between the daily new COVID-19 cases and passenger flow in urban rail transit can help effectively predict the impact of future pandemic situations on rail transit. In this study, based on a gated recurrent unit (GRU) neural network model, the daily passenger flow in urban rail transit in the postpandemic era was predicted, and the results were compared with those obtained using the long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network and other conventional time series analysis models such as SARIMA (seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average). Based on the trained GRU model, a partial dependence plot (PDP) was adopted to explore the quantitative relationship between the daily passenger flow and the daily new cases or weather attribute. The results showed that (1) the prediction accuracy of the GRU neural network model was 95.25%, which was the highest among the prediction models studied, indicating that the GRU could achieve the best performance. (2) The GRU model did not fluctuate significantly in the initial training stage, and its convergence rate was higher than that of the LSTM. (3) The number of daily new cases was negatively correlated with the daily passenger flow. For every new case on the previous day, the daily passenger flow fell by an average of 54,600 person-times. (4) Compared with no rain condition, the daily passenger flow decreased by 207,600 person-times on an average on rainy days. In summary, the neural network could achieve accurate prediction, while the PDP could compensate for the “black box” disadvantage of nonparametric models, owing to which the quantitative relationship between the number of new cases and daily passenger flow could be successfully explored. Our study can serve as a basis for demand prediction, operational organization, and policy implementation related to urban rail transit.

Revealing the Influence of the Fine-Scale Built Environment on Urban Rail Ridership with a Semiparametric GWPR Model

There is a causal interaction between urban rail passenger flow and the station-built environment. Analyzing the implicit relationship can help clarify rail transit operations or improve the land use planning of the station. However, to characterize the built environment around the station area, existing literature generally adopts classification factors in broad categories with strong subjectivity, and the research results are often shown to have case-specific applicability. Taking 154 stations on 8 rail transit lines in Xi’an, China, as an example, this paper uses the data sources of multiple open platforms, such as web map spatial data, mobile phone data, and price data on house purchasing and renting, then combines urban land classification in the China Urban Land Classification and Planning and Construction La1d Standard to classify the land use in the station area using structural hierarchy. On the basis of extracting fine-grained factors of the built environment, a semi-parametric Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression (sGWPR) model is used to analyze the correlation and influence between the variation of passenger flow and environmental factors. The results show that the area of Class II residential land (called R2) is the basis for generating passenger flow demand during morning and evening peak periods; The connection intensity between rail transit station area and bus services has a significant impact on commuters’ utilization level of urban rail transit. Furthermore, two scenarios in practical applications will be provided as guidance according to the research results. This study provides a general analytical framework using urban multi-source data to study the internal relationship and impact between the built environment of urban rail transit stations and passenger flow demand.

Short-term Prediction of Suzhou Rail Transit Passenger Flow Based on Combination Model

With the increasing economic development of China, the country encourages to develop public transport strongly, and urban rail transit has become a choice for more and more cities. But for rail transit operations, passenger flow prediction is becoming more and more important and has become a key issue in transportation planning. However, the effect of a single model on predicting short-term passenger flow is not ideal. Therefore, this study proposes a combined model based on GA-BP neural network and forecasts the passenger flow of Suzhou Urban Rail Transit Line 1 according to weather, holidays, and other factors. Meanwhile, the study compares with the ARIMA and BP neural network models. The results show that the accuracy of GA-BP model improved by 6.06% and 8.69% respectively which compared with the former, and the results have improved the accuracy of passenger flow prediction effectively. It is proved that the combined model has certain practical value.

Proportional Estimation Method of Urban Rail Passenger Flow Transfer Path Selection Based on IC Card Data

Based on the analysis of the influencing factors of urban rail transit passenger flow transfer path selection behavior and the components of travel time, a method of estimating the proportion of urban rail transit passenger flow transfer path selection based on IC card data is proposed. Firstly, the research determines the shortest interchange path algorithm as Dijkstra algorithm and the graph-based depth-first search algorithm as the effective interchange path search algorithm; analyzes the factors influencing the passenger flow interchange path selection behavior as three types of travel time, interchange cost and road network familiarity; constructs the generalized cost function of effective interchange path selection by combining travel time and interchange cost; establishes the passenger flow probability selection model by combining road network familiarity. To eliminate the influence of absolute difference of utility on the probability of path selection in the polynomial logit model, the path probability selection model is improved with the help of minimum travel cost; Bayesian estimation is used to compare the passenger travel time with the theoretical travel time to identify the closest effective interchange path, and the joint distribution probability is used to calibrate the probability selection model in terms of travel time and interchange cost. The coefficient, coefficient of interchange passenger flow, penalty coefficient of interchange number, familiarity of road network and other related parameters are combined with the joint distribution probability to calibrate the probability of selection of different effective interchange paths.

Forecast of Short-Term Passenger Flow in Multi-Level Rail Transit Network Based on a Multi-Task Learning Model

With the refinement of the urban transportation network, more and more passengers choose the combined mode. To provide better inter-trip services, it is necessary to integrate and forecast the passenger flow of multi-level rail transit network to improve the connectivity of different transport modes. The difficulty of multi-level rail transit passenger flow prediction lies in the complexity of the spatiotemporal characteristics of the data, the different characteristics of passenger flow composition, and the difficulty of research. At present, most of the research focuses on one mode of transportation or the passenger flow within the city, while the comprehensive analysis of passenger flow under various modes of transportation is less. This study takes the key nodes of the multi-level rail transit railway hub as the research object, establishes a multi-task learning model, and forecasts the short-term passenger flow of rail transit by combining the trunk railway, intercity rail transit and subway. Different from the existing research, the model introduces convolution layer and multi-head attention mechanism to improve and optimize the Transformer multi-task learning framework, trains and processes the data of trunk railway, intercity railway, and subway as different tasks, and considers the correlation of passenger flow of trunk railway, intercity railway, and subway in the prediction. At the same time, a new residual network structure is introduced to solve the problems of over-fitting, gradient disappearance, and gradient explosion in the training process. Taking the large comprehensive transportation hub in Guangzhou metropolitan area as an example, the proposed multi-task learning model is evaluated. The improved Transformer has the highest prediction accuracy (Average prediction accuracy of passenger flow of three traffic modes) 88.569%, and others methods HA, FC-LSTM and STGCN are 81.579%, 82.230% and 81.761%, respectively. The results show that the proposed multi-task learning model has better prediction performance than the existing models.