TranSantiago is the name of the new public transport system implemented in Santiago de Chile in February 2007. It consists of a complete design of the public transport network made of trunk and feeder services. Trunk routes are serviced with a total of 4 metro lines, and 18-m articulated buses,15-m and 12-m buses with four, three and two doors, respectively. Feeder services consist of 8-m midibuses and 10-m buses with two doors. Trunk routes run on the main avenues while feeder routes use secondary roads. The former system was made of a dense radial network from extreme to extreme ofthe city with 10 or 12-m conventional two-door buses running everywhere. The boarding time (BT) is the time that a public transport vehicle remainsstopped transferring passengers. It depends on the number of boarding andalighting passengers, plus other operational characteristics such as the fare collection method, number of doors and steps, internal layout of vehicles, etc. Traditionally, the BT has been described as a linear function of the number of passengers boarding/alighting. The BT of buses in Santiagode Chile was studied since 1997. In the case of two-door buses it was found that the BT depends also on the vehicle occupancy, congestion on stop platforms, and number of passengers queueing before the fare collection point inside the bus. The BT model is linear on parameters, but not necessaryon explanatory variables. Parameters represent the boarding and alightingtime per passenger and other times spent at stops, such as opening and closing doors. With the change from the direct-route network to the trunk-feeder structure in Santiago de Chile, the system has changed not only because of the design of vehicles (low-floor, multiple door buses) but also in the fare collection method. The fare is now collected by means of cards which are electronically read either inside the vehicle or in the bus stop (pre-paid zones). In addition, because of the metro system has became the main trunk service, it is suffering severe congestion inside the carriages (up to 7 passengers per square meter) as well as on platforms. A new research project involves the data collection and calibration of a new BT modelfor the current operational conditions in both bus and metro systems. Theaim is to use these new models for microscopic simulation of stop operations in order to improve the design and operation of bus stops and metro stations. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Abstract