Title: Evaluating Rail Vehicle Interior and Door Configurations to Increase Capacity
Abstract: This paper describes how rail vehicles are some of the most expensive assets for a transit agency. Therefore, maximizing their carrying capacity is important to gain service efficiency and minimize capital investment. A poorly designed interior configuration can result in undesirable spaces that passengers avoid and, thus, result in inefficient use of capacity. Lack of careful analysis on interior and door configuration combinations can also potentially reduce line capacity by exacerbating station dwell times. As many U.S. metropolitan areas continue to expect unprecedented growth in population and travel in the next 20 to 30 years, rail transit agencies are faced with the challenge of replacing their aging fleets and procuring new vehicles to keep up with increasing ridership. As funds become increasingly scarce, many agencies are exploring ways of increasing car capacity. To date, few studies address the design and evaluation of interior and door configurations as a system. Typically, seating configurations are designed separately from door configurations. Furthermore, interior configuration evaluations or maximum vehicle loading quoted by car manufacturers assume a uniform loading density applied throughout the car. Loading on transit vehicles, however, varies greatly within a car. This greatly affects practical vehicle capacity and its impact controlling dwell time at the busiest door. The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), a heavy rail rapid transit system, recently conducted an evaluation of interior and door configurations based on a methodology that uses variable loading densities and its resulting impact on door loads for dwell time estimation. Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) footage was used to assess passenger loading density at different sections of the vehicle. Variable loading density is more realistic in simulating actual passenger loading experience. This work shows that, depending on the interior and door configuration combination, applying uniform loading density may misrepresent actual car capacity and door loads, either wasting valuable resources or underestimating actual needs.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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