Passenger Behavior Simulation in Congested Urban Rail Transit System: A Capacity-Limited Optimal Strategy Model for Passenger Assignment

Optimal strategy, one of the main transit assignment models, can better demonstrate the flexibility for passengers using routes in a transit network. According to the basic optimal strategy model, passengers can board trains based on their frequency without any capacity limitation. In the metropolitan cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, morning commuters face huge transit problems. Especially for the metro system, there is heavy rush in metro stations. Owing to the limited train capacity, some passengers cannot board the first coming train and need to wait for the next one. To better demonstrate the behavior of passengers pertaining to the limited train capacity, we consider capacity constraints for the basic optimal strategy model to represent the real situation. We have proposed a simulation-based algorithm to solve the model and apply it to the Beijing Subway to demonstrate the feasibility of the model. The application of the proposed approach has been demonstrated using the computational results for transit networks originating from practice.