Assessing the usage and level-of-service of pedestrian facilities in train stations: A Swiss case study

A framework for assessing the usage and level-of-service of rail access facilities is presented. It consists of two parts. A dynamic demand estimator allows to obtain time-dependent origin-destination flows within pedestrian facilities. Using that demand, a traffic assignment model describes the propagation of pedestrians through the station, providing an estimate of prevalent traffic conditions in terms of flow, travel times, speed and density. The framework is discussed at the example of Lausanne railway station. For this train station, a rich set of data sources including travel surveys, pedestrian counts and trajectories has been collected in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Railways. Results show a good performance of the framework. Moreover, to underline its practical applicability, a six-step planning guideline is presented that can be used to design and optimize rail access facilities for new or existing train stations.