Evaluation of Operating Schemes on Municipal Rail Transit with Express/Local Mode

The express/local train mode has made municipal rail more competitive in connecting the city center with its suburbs. Therefore, how to design operating schemes is of concern to decision makers. Unlike earlier line planning optimization, this paper aims to provide a quick and comprehensive evaluation of operating performance in all feasible options through reasonable reduction of the scope of the operating schemes, rather than optimization for a single objective. To achieve this, the paper constructs a travel topology network structure based on the separation of trains, which regards express and local trains running on the common line as independent competitors. Focusing on the problems of uneven departure intervals and inconsistent dwell times caused by overtaking, a generalized cost model suitable for the express/local train mode is established. To solve the express/local line problems of multi-routes and high-overlapping, the improved Multinominal Logit (MNL) Model is used to construct a passenger flow assignment model, with the solution achieved by the Method of Successive Averages algorithm. Taking a municipal rail line in Guangzhou as a case study, this paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of feasible operation schemes with different characteristics in the express/local train ratio, the location and number of overtaking stations based on passenger flow assignment results and also the impacts of crowdedness on passenger flow dynamics. The results verified the effectiveness of our approach in the comprehensive evaluation of the express/local train mode and shed light on potential practical applications in determining a reasonable operating scheme.