Estimating Wait Time and Passenger Load in a Saturated Metro Network: A Data-Driven Approach

The service quality of public transit, such as comfort and convenience, is an important factor influencing ridership and fare revenue, which also reflects the passengers' perception to the transit performance. Passengers are frustrated while waiting to board a crowded train especially during the peak hours, while the fail-to-board (FtB) situation commonly exists. The service performance measures determined by deterministic passenger demand and service frequency cannot reflect the perceived service of passengers. With the automatic fare collection system data provided by Chengdu Metro, we develop a data-driven approach considering the joint probability of spatiotemporal passenger demand at stations based on posted train schedule to approximate passenger travel time (e.g., in-vehicle and out-of-vehicle times). It was found that the estimated wait time can reflect the actual situation as passengers FtB. The proposed modeling approach and analysis results would be useful and beneficial for transit providers to improve system performance and service planning.