Modeling PT infrastructure

If you model pedestrians as passengers boarding or alighting in PT, they can be going to the station, waiting there for the PT vehicle and boarding once the alighting passengers have left the vehicle. Alighting passengers follow the routes which are assigned to them as soon as they leave a train or a bus. You can easily model such a scenario with waiting areas, platform edges and definitions of the number of boarding and alighting passengers. (Quick start guide: Defining pedestrians as PT passengers).

You model public transport stops, PT vehicles as well as the associated PT lines by default using the relevant network objects (Modeling PT stops), (Using vehicle types), (Modeling PT lines).

Modeling waiting areas and platform edges

• Pedestrians wait in waiting areas of a public transport stop for a PT vehicle of the PT line which they want to use. To define waiting areas for a public transport stop, you must create a pedestrian area and assign the entry Waiting area to the attribute PT usage (Attributes of areas). You can also assign multiple public transport stops to a waiting area. When boarding passengers reach a waiting area that has multiple stops assigned to it, the stop they use is determined from the relative volumes specified for boarding passengers at those stops. The public transport line that the pedestrian boards is determined from the public transport lines assigned to these stops.
• To define a platform edge, you must create a pedestrian area and assign the entry Platform edge to the attribute Public transport usage (Attributes of areas). You can also assign multiple public transport stops to a platform edge.

Alighting passengers go to the nearest platform edge which they can reach. This depends on the door via which they leave the PT vehicle. The process of alighting concludes at the end of the time step in which the passenger has reached the platform edge in front of the door. If a routing decision is placed on the platform edge, the passenger continues his walk. If no routing decision is placed on the platform edge, the passenger is removed from the Vissim network.

The platform edge and the lane with the public transport stop must be directly adjacent or overlap so that alighting passengers may alight on the platform edge and boarding passengers may board the PT vehicle from the platform edge. In the network editor, use the shortcut menu to can add a platform edge along a public transport stop (Adding platform edges). The attributes Left and Right specify the location of the platform edge parallel to the direction in which you have defined the public transport stop on the link. The number of the platform edge is shown in the attribute Areas of the public transport stop.

If a pedestrian is assigned to be at a platform edge or waiting area of a public transport stop for which no boarding passengers are defined, default values are generated.

• These defaults are also generated if a platform edge is added via a shortcut menu.
• Through these default values, each pedestrian who arrives in the waiting area, in the time interval 0 to 99,999, boards a PT vehicle once a PT line serves the public transport stop.

Adding alighting passengers

Alighting passengers are added using the setting in the PT Line Stop window (Editing a PT line stop).

• You specify the percentage of alighting passengers per line for each PT line stop.
• You must select the pedestrian composition for the Alighting composition according to which the pedestrian types are added to the vehicle.

Behavior of boarding and alighting passengers

For each PT stop, you can specify whether pedestrians may board or alight on the right side, left side, or on both sides (Editing a PT line stop). By default, all doors on both sides can be used. Boarding passengers wait in the waiting area of the relevant public transport stop. For this waiting area to be reached by the passenger, the destination of a pedestrian route must lie on it.

• The boarding passenger numbers per PT stop result in the PT line with which the waiting passengers want to travel. Once a vehicle from one of these PT lines stops at the PT stop, the passengers walk directly to the nearest door. The pedestrians start to board once all alighting passengers have left the vehicle.
• Passengers can enter until the door is half closed.
• If, depending on the attributes Door lock duration before departure and Door closure delay of the PT line stop and the Door closure duration of the vehicle type, nobody has entered the vehicle, it will leave the PT stop as soon as the departure time is reached. The departure time is based on the timetable or the predefined stopped delay. The degree of Slack time fraction of the PT line is taken into account for the scheduled departure time.
• You can select the distribution among the doors in the attribute Boarding location of pedestrian area for boarding passengers, and in the PT line stop parameters for alighting passengers (Editing a PT line stop). Therein, you specify with the option Late boarding possible, how a PT vehicle, whose departure time is either prescribed by a timetable or a predetermined time, should respond to a never-ending stream of boarding passengers.
• If a pedestrian was unable to board a PT vehicle, for example, due to vehicle capacity limitations, the pedestrian returns to a waiting area.
• Default settings are generated for boarding passengers if a public transport stop is assigned to a waiting area or a platform edge for which no boarding passenger share is specified. Due to these default settings, each pedestrian who comes to a waiting area of this public transport stop boards the next PT vehicle that stops.

Defining doors for public transport vehicles

A door of a 2D vehicle model has the following properties (Defining doors for public transport vehicles):

• Position, measured from the front
• Width
• one of the two sides of the vehicle
• For each door, you can specify whether it can be used only for boarding or only for alighting or for both.

If you use a 3D model, the properties of the door are derived from it.

• You can add or remove doors via the shortcut menu and change the data directly in the base data (Defining doors for public transport vehicles).
• A warning is issued if changes do not suit the 3D model. You can still confirm these changes. The values in the window are used for the simulation and the values of the 3D model are used only in 3D mode to show the opening and closing of doors.
• If you have not created a door for a vehicle, a door is added temporarily in the middle of the vehicle. Thus pedestrians can still board and alight. They are informed of this via a warning in the trace file.