Evaluating skip-stop policy in urban rail transit systems based on passenger cost

Increasing the operating speed in public transport systems can increase the system capacity, reduce the overall passenger travel time and improve experienced comfort. Skip-stop operation, where subsets of the trains operating on the same tracks skip certain intermediate stops, can accelerate the service and improve passengers’ overall travel experience. This paper considers the problem of deciding whether skip-stop operation is beneficial for a given line and which stopping scheme is the most effective. In particular, we investigate whether a simple decision rule for determining the stopping pattern under a skip-stop strategy, derived from the expected weighted time benefits to the passengers, can reliably determine the most suitable skip-stop scheme. To evaluate the impact of alternative stop-skipping strategies, we adopt the existing public transit assignment model BusMezzo, which allows for a realistic representation of passengers’ experienced waiting and in-vehicle travel times and the resulting trade-offs between passenger costs and benefits. The decision rule is applied to a set of high-frequency urban rail lines in Stockholm, Sweden. We show that a simple decision rule may not be a robust way of determining a beneficial skip-stop scheme. The results from the case study reveal that the skip-stop operation can have an overall positive impact on passenger generalized travel time but only under certain conditions at the stops along the line.