Personal rapid transit (PRT) systems are on-demand transport systems
in which small autonomous vehicles travel on their own dedicated infrastructure.
Passengers travel alone or in small groups in a vehicle without intermediate stops
to their requested destination. Typically, they are considered as medium capacity
systems of 5,000–20,000 passengers/h. This paper sets the focus on the optimal
passenger guidance within PRT stations to maximize station capacity and in particular
in the queue formation for the passengers within the PRT station. The queueing
processes are modelled with a microscopic traffic simulation software. The examined
scenario is a train station at which the passengers form queues before boarding to
the PRT system. Two types of queues are examined: An S-shaped and a funnel-
shaped queue. To determine the maximum number of the dispatched passengers of
the PRT station, the percentage of the passengers alighting from the train is increased
incrementally. The results of the simulation show that both queue types reach the
same maximum number of dispatched passengers per hour. This indicates that there is
a certain likelihood that station capacity is independent of the shape of queues within
the station, but it depends rather on availability of vehicles within the station. We
draw this conclusion from a visual observation of the model and a rough comparison
with values from a previous study. Therefore, there is more potential to increase PRT
system capacities in the optimization of the PRT vehicle-side processes in the station,
rather than in the optimization of passenger-side queues in the station.
«Personal rapid transit (PRT) systems are on-demand transport systems
in which small autonomous vehicles travel on their own dedicated infrastructure.
Passengers travel alone or in small groups in a vehicle without intermediate stops
to their requested destination. Typically, they are considered as medium capacity
systems of 5,000–20,000 passengers/h. This paper sets the focus on the optimal
passenger guidance within PRT stations to maximize station capacity and in particular
in the q...
»