Metro stop-skipping rescheduling optimization considering passenger waiting time fairness

Abstract

In urban metro systems, unexpected events often occur to cause discordance in the planned timetable and delay in passenger travel. Therefore, this study focuses on the timetable rescheduling problem by adopting a stop-skipping strategy during the off-peak period. In addition, there are a number of existing optimization models that minimize the total passenger waiting time, which can cause fairness issues for a small group of passengers having longer waiting time at some stations. In this study, a rescheduling model is proposed to consider passenger waiting time fairness and train travel time cost. This model is tested with a randomly designed delay scenario of Nanjing Metro Line 2, which can be efficiently solved by a designed iterative algorithm based on decomposition method. Compared to the standard stop pattern, the result shows that the stop-skipping pattern can better alleviate the impact of sudden delays, while simultaneously ensuring the passenger waiting time fairness.