Optimum headway time in a stochastic transport system with a sinusoidal arrival rate of passengers

Abstract

We investigate the effect of the instability (variation) of headway time to the efficiency of a transport system using the mean-field analysis to a single station S given a sinusoidally varying passenger arrival rate. An optimum average headway time T_op is shown to give a proper balance between the efficiency in the utility of vehicles and the effectivity of the system. T_op is also found to be independent of the two types of distribution of the headway time. The analytic result is shown to be comparable to an agent based model.