Passenger Flow Control at Platforms in Urban Rail Systems

Abstract

Flow of passengers is the one of main operational aspects for urban rail systems. Over the recent years, passenger flows vary frequently causing disturbances on trains operation, and unsafe overcrowded environments for passengers. To improve the performance of rail systems, this paper presents a control method to regulate disturbed passenger flows and rail system. A traffic model coupling dynamics between staying times at stations and accumulated passengers at platforms is formulated. The suggested control method applies actions both on the train traffic and stations’ facilities, using real time measurements and model predictive control optimization method. Actions at each stage are calculated as a solution of quadratic programming problem with regulation objective, and safety, feasibility, and limited platform capacity constraints. Moreover, the objective function accounts passengers at platforms to reach effective flows during the controlled period. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the rail system performances under the proposed control method.