Secondary Passenger Flow Control with Flexible Stop-Skipping Train Schedule Patterns on an Oversaturated Urban Metro Line

Abstract This study focuses on reducing traffic congestion in an oversaturated metro system and better balancing the use of train resources using a collaborative passenger flow control method. At the same time, flexible skip-stopping train scheduling pattern and secondary control rules are considered. Specifically, by introducing variables such as secondary passenger flow control, train scheduling, and stop skipping, a mixed nonlinear programming model aimed at minimizing the number of waiting passengers, train service time, and stop penalty is explicitly constructed to optimize the trade-off between train operation efficiency and passenger waiting time. The model is then reformulated as a mixed-integer linear program with a linearization method. To validate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed model, a series of numerical examples are conducted on a small-scale case and the Beijing metro system. The computational results show that the proposed model can reduce train running time and the number of passengers waiting on the platform, while also producing high-quality passenger flow control and train scheduling strategies for the metro system within a suitable computational time.