Influencing Passenger Egress to Reduce Congestion at Rail Stations

As rail station patronage levels increase, so too does the load on the entire railway system. The higher passenger densities exacerbate local egress issues and thus adversely affect dwell time and subsequently punctuality, along with the passenger experience. Devices such as barriers are regularly used to influence passenger egress. However, their use is typically limited to special events; where perhaps a single influence-objective is intended on a relatively uniform passenger demographic. This limitation precludes such devices usefulness for daily operations; where potentially multiple influence-objectives, which potentially change regularly, exists. Furthermore, it is reasonable to expect a considerably less uniform passenger demographic which perhaps includes passengers that are less receptive to particular influence strategies. This paper presents an exploration of components of a robotic system that is responsive to real time person behaviours and operator’s needs. Specifically, details of our methods for identification of the passenger demographic groups and passenger egress influencing are presented along with results from two studies. The first study was conducted at Townhall Station Sydney and explored our robotic system’s ability to reliably identify the passenger demographic of individual passengers in real time. The ability of our robotic system to influence real time egress of real in-transit passengers in situ, and the ability to responsively moderate influence-objective based on observed characteristics was explored in the second study which was co-located at Perth Station Perth and the University of Technology Sydney. Finally, this paper discusses how this predictable influence of passenger egress can potentially be leveraged to benefit operations.