I can board, but I’d rather wait: Active boarding delay choice behaviour analysis using smart card data in metro systems

Authors

Xin Chen
Yu Jiang
Jesper Bláfoss Ingvardson
Xia Luo
Otto Anker Nielsen

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2023

Subject Area

place - asia, place - urban, mode - subway/metro, ridership - behaviour, ridership - modelling, operations - crowding, technology - passenger information, technology - ticketing systems

Keywords

Public transport, Active boarding delay, Crowding, Itinerary inference, Smart card records, Revealed preference

Abstract

In a crowded metro network, it is not unusual to observe that passengers actively choose not to board but wait for the next train for a seat, even if there is vacant standing room on the arriving train. We analyse such behaviour using a logit-based choice model based on revealed preference data collected from the smart card records and the operational timetables. The choice model considers waiting time, fluctuating crowding levels, and passengers’ expected seat availability at each station on their trip. The revealed preference data are collected based on an existing time component framework, which can estimate passengers’ itineraries by dividing passengers’ travel time into time components (i.e. access, egress, boarding delay, and transfer-walking times) and analysing their uncertainty. We improve the time component framework by developing methods for estimating distributions corresponding to each time component. Using Chengdu Metro as a case, we find that the extra waiting time resulting from active boarding delay and standing time is valued 50.5% more positively and 25.3% more negatively than the in-vehicle sitting time, respectively. By comparing our findings with studies focused on passive boarding delays caused by fully loaded trains, we suggest that extra waiting time due to active and passive boarding delays should be explicitly distinguished in practice. The estimation results of the distributions for the time components indicate that access and egress walking times follow different distributions at given stations, as opposed to the assumption in most prior studies.

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

Recommended Citation

Chen, X., Jiang, Y., Ingvardson, J. B., Luo, X., & Nielsen, O. A. (2023). I can board, but I’d rather wait: Active boarding delay choice behaviour analysis using smart card data in metro systems. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 174, 103747.