Title A Preliminary Study on Capacity of Light Rail Transit Systems
Dept Transportation Planning and Land Transport Division
Year 2014
Month
Price
Summary Light rail transit (LRT) lines often have characteristics such as street running, grade crossings and single track. The detailed design characteristics are important in capacity determination. The key to determining the capacity of an LRT line is to find the weakest link – its location or factor that limits the capacity of the entire line. The method of determining the capacity of light rail transit lines is complicated by types of rights of way. Other limitations on LRT capacity (supply) can be imposed by single-track sections and length of street blocks.

　　LRT systems encompass a variety of technologies, vehicle sizes, and applications. Despite these variations, a few basic factors—in particular, dwell time and the train signal control system—typically control the number of trains that can be operated along a section of a line during an hour. The number of cars per train and the diversity of passenger demand control how many people those trains can carry. LRT operates in a variety of rights of way, each of which has its specific capacity. LRT alignments may be classified as exclusive, semi-exclusive, or non-exclusive. After reviewing related literature and information on LRT capacity in Japan and USA, it is concluded that all the issues mentioned above are the main topics of the analysis conducted in this research. It is expected that the preliminary analysis results can provide a reference for subsequent research on LRT capacity.

　　In order to identify the complicated nature of the key factors affecting LRT capacity, this study selected the Ankeng LRT line of Taipei MRT network as study site and collected the data of its basic transportation capability, signal control system, train operation simulation, and timetable scheduling for detailed analysis. The main findings of the case study are as follows: (1) the maximum peak hour volume of the Ankeng line is 6,100 passengers/hour if the designed headway is 3 minutes in K6-K9 section, 6 minutes in K1-K6 section, and the maximum loading per car is 305 passengers; (2) regarding the service reliability, this line can provide homogeneous operation from the first station to the end in off-peak period, and the headway is 10 minutes.
Post date 2014/08/29
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