SIMULATION OF BUS PASSANGER ARRIVAL PATTERN AT URBAN BUS STOPS

Abstract

In this work an attempt is made to simulate the passenger flow and their waiting times microscopically. A review of simulation models of bus transportation is done and the various shortcomings and gaps are found out. The main objective of this study is to formulate a simulation model to represent the per-formance of present schedule of buses on a identified route in Delhi. The simulation models are the representation of a real life system. In the case of arrival pattern of passengers at urban bus-stops, most of the relationships are available in literature and others developed by the use of logical rules. Since the arrivals of passengers at bus-stops are stochartic in nature, different probability distribution are tried for each bus-stop and the passenger are generated with that distribution which fits closely. The computer programmes are developed in FORTRAN IV language and tested on DEC-2050 System which is available at Roorkee University Regional Computer Centre (RURCC). The inputs for the model are as follows: 1. Volume of passengers arriving at bus-stop per hour 2. Maximum seating capacity 3. Number of passenger boarding and alighting at a bus-stop for each bus of that route 4, Arrival times of Buses at each bus-stop 5. Number of buses serving each bus-stop during the period of simulation 6. Number of bus-stops on the route 7. Arrival distribution of passengers at each bus-stop. The output of the model includes: 1, Waiting time of each passenger, average waiting time of passenger for each bus at each bus-stop, average waiting time of passenger at each bus-stop, cumulative waiting time of passengers at each bus-stop and average waiting time of passenger on the route for a bus of particular route number. 2. Variation of passengers queue at each bus-stop along the time, average number of passenger waiting at each bus-stop and average queue of passenger waiting for service on entire route to get the service. The simulation model is subjected to repeated tests for verifying its performance as per the logical rules, The vali-dation is done with respect to the magnitudes represented by certain elements of the model to the real life conditions of the system simulated. There are: 1. Variation of the queue at the bus-stops 2. Waiting time of passengers at the bus,,stops 3. Frequency of passenger arrivals 4. Distribution of passenger arrivals The data are collected at one of the bus-stops in New Delhi for validation of the model. One hundred and thirty minutes of real world data can be generated within 0.37 seconds on the computer with all the required statistics for a bus-stop, The model thus built up can be used as a testing tool for evaluating the performance of the present schedule of buses on a particular route for a particular period (peak or off-peak or both).