Assessing the usage and level-of-service of pedestrian facilities in train stations: A Swiss case study

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2016

Subject Area

place - europe, mode - pedestrian, mode - rail, infrastructure - station, planning - surveys, planning - service level, land use - planning

Keywords

travel surveys, level-of-service, usage, pedestrian, train station

Abstract

A framework for assessing the usage and level-of-service of rail access facilities is presented. It consists of two parts. A dynamic demand estimator allows to obtain time-dependent pedestrian origin–destination demand within walking facilities. Using that demand, a traffic assignment model describes the propagation of pedestrians through the station, providing an estimate of prevalent traffic conditions in terms of flow, walking times, speed and density. The corresponding level-of-service of the facilities can be directly obtained. The framework is discussed at the example of Lausanne railway station. For this train station, a rich set of data sources including travel surveys, pedestrian counts and trajectories has been collected in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Railways. Results show a good performance of the framework. To underline its practical applicability, a six-step planning guideline is presented that can be used to design and optimize rail access facilities for new or existing train stations. In the long term, the framework may also be used for crowd management, involving real-time monitoring and control of pedestrian flows.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.

Comments

Transportation Research Part A Home Page:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09658564

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