Urban rail departure capacity analysis based on a cellular automaton model

As an important traffic mode, urban rail transit is constantly developing toward improvement in service capacity and quality. When an urban rail transit system is evaluated in terms of its service capacity, the train departure capacity is an important index that can objectively reflect the service level of an urban rail transit facility. In light of the existing cellular automaton models, this paper proposes a suitable cellular automaton model to analyze the train departure capacity of urban rail transit under different variable factors and conditions. The established model can demonstrate the train operating processes by implementing the proposed sound rules, including the rules of train departure at the origin and intermediate stations, and the velocity and position updating rules. The properties of train traffic are analyzed via numerical experiments. The numerical results show that the departure capacity is negatively affected by the train departure control manner. In addition, （i） the real-time signal control can offer a higher train service frequency; （ii） the departure capacity gradually rises with the decrease in the line design speed to a limited extent; （iii） the departure capacity decreases with extension in the train length; （iv） the number of departed trains decreases as the train stop time increases; （v） the departure capacity is not affected by the section length. However, the longer the length, the worse the service quality of the urban rail transit line. The experiments show that the proposed cellular automaton model can be used to analyze the train service capacity of an urban rail transit system by performing quantitative analysis under various considered factors, conditions, and management modes.