Estimate Passengers' Walking and Waiting Time in Metro Station Using Smart Card Data (SCD)

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 8; pp. 11074 - 11083
• Main Authors: Li, Wanjun, Yan, Xuedong, Li, Xiaomeng, Yang, Jingsi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Airports; Algorithms; Estimation; Legged locomotion; Level of service (LOS); Logic gates; Mathematical model; metro system; Passengers; Public transportation; Railway engineering; Railway stations; smart card data (SCD); Smart cards; Subway construction; Subway stations; Trajectory; waiting time; Walking; walking time
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2965155

Passengers' walking time and waiting time at metro stations are important indicators for evaluating the level of service (LOS) of a metro station. This paper aims to estimate passengers' walking time and waiting time at metro stations based on a proposed passenger-to-train assignment method using smart card data (SCD). Firstly, two algorithms were developed to determine the possible train choice set for all the passengers. Secondly, passengers' walking time distribution was estimated for different group of passengers categorized by travel periods, type of cardholder and social demographics. Lastly, passengers' waiting time at origin stations was explored based on the train choice model proposed in this study. The study found that passengers traveling at peak hours tend to walk faster than they do at non-peak hours. The overall waiting time at origin stations is highly related to the train headway (time interval between the adjacent arrival trains in the same direction and station) and passenger volume. More importantly, the result suggested when the passenger volume is low, train headway could significantly affect waiting time. However, when the passenger volume exceeds certain level (>1000 in 15 minutes), it becomes to the major factor leading to the increase in waiting time. Elders and disabled passengers have extended waiting time during peak hours than other passengers. The method proposed in this study offers a new perspective of using SCD in travel behavior analysis. Besides, the results bring insights for future metro station construction and operation design as well as evaluation on the LOS of metro system.