Capacity Research in Urban Rail-bounded Transportation with Special Consideration of Mixed Traffic

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ullrich Martin
• Subject Area: Traffic and Transport Systems, Intelligent and Automated Traffic
• Term: from 2013 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 244589100

In urban mixed traffic zones, the rail-bounded transport is strongly influenced by the individual transport, which is comprised of individual vehicles and pedestrians. Accordingly, the urban mixed traffic also impacts on the results of capacity research of rail-bounded systems. In order to improve the accuracy of capacity research for urban rail-bounded systems, a simulation model for urban rail-bounded transport with consideration of mixed traffic integrated with the systematic universal stochastic description of the various influences will be derived in this proposed research project. As a result of the stochastic influences on urban rail-bounded transport, the waiting time function, which results from the simulation methodology of capacity research will be adapted to mixed traffic conditions. For the existing method, the time and expenses for the process have to be considerably reduced, and the flexibility of model adapted to various investigated situations has to be improved; in addition, the systematic methodological description of the interaction between the urban rail-bounded transport and individual transport in correlation to the model has to be represented. There are two approaches will be developed. One approach - the Modeling Approach - is by developing a systematic assessment method, which can be used independently of specific applications for the determination of the significant infrastructure sections. On these infrastructure sections, the individual transportation is modeled as rail-bounded transport in model. With this approach, the influences on urban rail-bounded transport can be universally described directly in simulation by usage of existing knowledge. The different changing rates of traffic loads between individual and rail-bounded transportation have to be derived. Another approach - the Distribution Approach - includes the description of the stochastic influences caused by individual transportation as perturbation by mathematical distributions. Moreover, through a systematic analysis and categorization, some of the essential influences can be transferred into the characteristics of the rail-bounded model in the simulation method, which simplifies the description of the stochastic influences in certain typical situations. For analysis and categorization, gathering of data and sensitivity analysis for influences will be examined in advance. The two approaches will be compared with the existing method and the improvement of the two approaches will be described. In addition, the comparison of the impacts of the two approaches will be exposed by using various applications.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants