Passenger Perspectives in Railway Timetabling: A Literature Review

When looking at railway planning, a discrepancy exists between planners who focus on the train operations and publish fixed railway schedules, and passengers who look not only at the schedules but also at the entirety of their trip, from access to waiting to on-board travel and egress. Looking into this discrepancy is essential, as assessing railway performances by merely measuring train punctuality would provide an unfair picture of the level of service experienced by passengers. Firstly, passengers’ delays are often significantly larger than the train delays responsible for the passengers to be late. Secondly, trains’ punctuality is often strictly related to too tight schedules that in turn might translate into knock-on delays for longer dwelling times at stations, trip delays for increased risk of missing transfer connections, and uncertain assessment of the level of service experienced, especially with fluctuating passenger demand. A key aspect is the robustness of railway timetables. Empirical evidence indicates that passengers give more importance to travel time certainty than travel time reductions, as passengers associate an inherent disutility with travel time uncertainty. This disutility may be broadly interpreted as an anxiety cost for the need for having contingency plans in case of disruptions, and may be looked at as the motivator for the need for delay-robust railway timetables. Interestingly, passenger-oriented optimisation studies considering robustness in railway planning typically limit their emphasis on passengers to the consideration of transfer maintenance. Clearly, passengers’ travel behaviour is far more complex and multi-faceted and thus several other aspects should be considered, as becoming more and more evident from passenger surveys. The current literature review starts by looking at the parameters that railway optimisation/planning studies are focused on and the key performance indicators that impact railway planning. The attention then turns to the parameters influencing passengers’ perceptions and travel experiences. Finally, the review proposes guidelines on how to reduce the gap between the operators’ railway planning and performance measurement on the one hand and the passengers’ perception of the railway performance on the other hand. Thereby, the conclusions create a foundation for a more passenger-oriented railway timetabling ensuring that passengers are provided with the best service possible with the resources available.     

Development of efficient stop planning optimization process for high‐speed rail systems

The Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) has recently added three additional stations to its original network. Although the three additional stations can improve accessibility to the system, these new stations can present difficulties in the transportation planning process, particularly for planning of train stops. The additional stations may benefit some passengers, but may also lengthen the travel time for the other passengers. Therefore, the main challenge faced by THSR is finding an efficient way to design appropriate stopping patterns. Past studies on stop planning usually adopted meta‐heuristics or decomposition methods to solve this complex problem. Although these solution techniques can improve solution efficiency, none of them can guarantee the optimality of the solution and capture the transfer movement of different stopping patterns. In this research, we proposed an innovative network structure to address complex stop planning problems for high‐speed rail systems. Given its special network structure, two binary integer programming models were developed to simultaneously form and determine the optimal stopping patterns for real‐world THSR stop planning problems. An optimization process was also developed to accurately estimate the station transfer time corresponding to the variation in stopping patterns and passenger flow. Results of the case studies suggest that the proposed binary integer programming models exhibit superior solution quality and efficiency over existing exact optimization models. Consequently, using this stop planning optimization process can help high‐speed rail system planners in designing optimal stopping patterns that correspond to passenger demand. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conflict‐free time‐based trajectory planning for aircraft taxi automation with refined taxiway modeling

To mitigate airport congestion caused by increasing air traffic demand, the trajectory‐based surface operations concept has been proposed to improve surface movement efficiency while maintaining safety. It utilizes decision support tools to provide optimized time‐based trajectories for each aircraft and uses automation systems to guide surface movements and monitor their conformance with assigned trajectories. Whether the time‐based trajectories can be effectively followed so that the expected benefits can be guaranteed depends firstly on whether these trajectories are realistic. So, this paper first deals with the modeling biases of the network model typically used for taxi trajectory planning via refined taxiway modeling. Then it presents a zone control‐based dynamic routing and timing algorithm upon the refined taxiway model to find the shortest time taxi route and timings for an aircraft. Finally, the presented algorithm is integrated with a sequential planning framework to continuously decide taxi routes and timings. Experimental results demonstrate that the solution time for an aircraft can be steadily around a few milliseconds with timely cleaning of expired time windows, showing potential for real‐time decision support applications. The results also show the advantages of the proposed methodology over existing approaches. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

快速公交（BRT）线路布局优化研究

为探讨现有公共交通线网结构下BRT线路布设优化问题,对快速公交线路布设的内部条件和外部条件进行了分析;在此基础上依据快速公交的发展特点,以乘客总出行时耗最小和车公里成本投入最小为目标,建立了快速公交布局优化的模型,并且给出了优化目标和相应约束条件的函数表达式。通过事例分析对BRT线路布设优化算法进行说明,从而得知优化模型具有较高的应用价值。     

城市新区市政道路交通设施规划探讨

该文通过鄂尔多斯市东胜铁西二期开发片区市政基础设施专项规划实例,从路网布局、道路竖向、静态交通等方面论述了城市新区市政道路交通设施规划应注意的要素,可供道路专业人员参考。     

公路网分车型收费费率优化算法研究

结合山东省公路网联网收费的实际情况,建立了山东省公路网收费费率的双层规划模型,以描述路网管理者、收费道路经营者和车辆用户三者在费率决策中的博弈关系。采用弹性需求模式下的收费费率双层规划模型,选取山东省联网收费的一个路网,利用模拟退火和遗传算法的混合算法,对模型进行了应用和分析。验证结果表明,利用这种收费道路费率优化算法,不仅可以保证道路经营者能实现财务目标,而且能有效地均衡路网交通流量。     

乐山市停车战略分区规划研究

停车战略分区规划,是停车系统规划的首要及关键问题。根据停车战略分区的原则和依据,以乐山为例,提出适合乐山发展的停车战略分区以及各区域相应的停车战略,可为各区域停车设施供应总量及结构规划提供依据。     

东京都市圈轨道交通发展及其启示

研究东京都市圈发展历程、相应各阶段轨道交通发展特征及其相互关系,对揭示轨道交通在都市圈形成与发展具有重要作用。     

北京市土地利用与交通发展评价指标研究

指标选择和应用的研究是评价土地利用与交通发展是否协调的基础条件。在充分调研美国波特兰大都市区、芝加哥大都市区、亚特兰大北区城市规划的基础上,结合北京市城市特点、发展方向,提出了城市土地利用与交通发展评价指标集。从土地集约化程度、交通系统效率与服务水平、环境质量3个方面进行评价指标的选取,建立了宏观、中观分区和中观功能区评价指标体系,分别对应于总体规划和控制性详细规划中界定的规划区域范围。     

厦门市步行系统规划研究

为解决厦门市目前缺乏统一有效的步行系统规划的问题,从城市特征、路网、步行专用路径和局部地区层面分析了目前厦门市步行系统的建设状况,建立了分隔度指标以衡量机动交通对步行活动的分隔程度。从步行活动特征角度将厦门市划分为3个基本分区,在此基础上,分别从步行通廊和步行通道两方面探讨了厦门市步行系统的宏观结构规划。在中观层面,将基本分区中的城市建成区划分为96个步行单元,分别针对城市中心区、居住区和工业区制定了步行系统的规划控制要求。