Commuting equilibria on a mass transit system with capacity constraints.

Little attention has been paid to the problem of modeling commuters' departure time choice for urban transit services. A model is formulated, explicitly formulating the vehicle capacity constraints into transit corridor commuting modeling with crowding effects. Two types of capacity, namely physical capacity and seat capacity are taken into account. By introducing the physical capacity constraint, the effects of overflow queues at stationsin a highly congested transit system can be modeled. By introducing the in-vehicle seat capacity, the different degree of discomfort experienced bysitting and standing commuters can be modeled. A basic mathematical programming model which incorporates the physical capacity constraint only is formulated. The model consists of multiple inter-related minimization problems, each corresponding to one transit stop. Some equilibrium properties of commuting are then derived by analyzing the model's solution and anothermathematical programming model which considers the physical and seat capacity constraints simultaneously is developed. A solution method for obtainingthe equilibrium departure pattern of commuters is presented and testedin two examples. The commuters' travel costs and behaviours caused by physical and seat capacity constraints are compared. For the covering abstract see ITRD E144727. Reprinted by permission of Elsevier.