Real-time seat allocation for minimizing boarding/alighting time and improving quality of service and safety for passengers

Rail is considered as one of the most important ways of transferring passengers. High passenger loads has implications on train punctuality. One of the important parameters affecting punctuality is the average boarding/alighting time. Organizing boarding/alighting flows not only reduces the risk of extended dwell time, but also minimizes the risk of injuries and improves the overall service quality. In this paper, the authors investigate the possibility of minimizing the boarding/alighting time by maintaining a uniform load on carriages through systematic distribution of passengers with flexible tickets, such as season or anytime tickets where no seat information are provided at the time of reservation. To achieve this, the proposed algorithm takes other information such as passenger final destination, uniform load of luggage areas, as well as group travelers into account. Moreover, a discrete event simulation is designed for measuring the performance of the proposed method. The performance of the proposed method is compared with three algorithms on different test scenarios. The results show the superiority of the proposed method in terms of minimizing boarding/alighting time as well as increasing the success rate of assigning group of seats to group of passengers.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2019.03.014
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X18310404
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/0968090X
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Yazdani, Danial
  • 0000-0002-7799-5013
  • Omidvar, Mohammad Nabi
  • 0000-0003-1944-4624
  • Deplano, Igor
  • Lersteau, Charly
  • Makki, Ahmed
  • Wang, Jin
  • Nguyen, Trung Thanh
  • 0000-0002-3268-1790
• Publication Date: 2019-6

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 158-173
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
  • Volume: 103
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0968-090X
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0968090X

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Algorithms; Boarding and alighting; Heuristic methods; On time performance; Optimization; Passenger service; Quality of service; Railroad safety; Railroads; Real time information; Seats
• Uncontrolled Terms: Seat allocation problem
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Railroads; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01704984
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 21 2019 11:06AM