Abstract

Metro stations are considered complex areas of pedestrian mobility due to the increasing congestion, due to the a high level of demand of different circulation spaces. Given this situation and the limited physical spaces remaining to develop transport systems in urban areas, railways acquire greater relevance given the need to mobilize pedestrians. Within the stations, the most problematic area is the platform-train interface (PTI) due to the high number of interactions between passengers boarding and alighting. The objective of this study is to identify the PTI configuration that maximizes the level of service for passengers, safeguards the operational continuity of the system and improves user experience by reducing dissatisfaction and delay times. For this, a pedestrian microsimulation model is used in order to recreate the reality of a generic metro station and its different scenarios given the combinations of two factors: the platform configurations (topology) and the traffic control elements. Subsequently, these scenarios are analyzed through a factorial design, looking for the situation that optimizes the combination of metrics chosen in a weighted way. Finally, it is found that the PTI configuration that maximizes the level of service for users is the mixed station with signaling. It is this which includes the factors with the greatest positive effect on the chosen metrics.