Design of timetable for airport coach based on ‘time–space’ network and passenger’s trip chain

Abstract

Abstract. This paper designs the timetable for the airport coach which is a new access service provided by the airport with the purpose of attracting more passengers. Firstly, the 'time-space' network is constructed for analyzing the formation of the passengers' trip chain; Secondly, the timetable design model is built with the aim to minimize the unit operation cost per transported passenger of the airport coach and a genetic algorithm with matrix coding is used for solving the model. In the model, the coach departure time and the flight schedule are connected with each other; the quality of the coach service and the passenger's demand are both considered. Finally, the coach of Dalian airport in China is taken as an example to test the proposed method. Through solving the model and sensitivity analysis, we obtain a coach timetable for Dalian airport. The results show that the proposed model can provide a practical method to design the timetable for the airport coaches with 'hub-and-spoke' network.

Evaluation of Service Quality in Passenger Transport with a Focus on Liner Maritime Passenger Transport—A Systematic Review

“…The authors used different quantitative methods to analyze the data obtained with qualitative methods. Articles that used only quantitative methods provided data from previous research or other available sources, such as information on queue length and the average time customers spent in the queue ("queueing theory") [30] or the "time-space" network to analyze the formation of passengers' travel chains [31].…”

“…The sub-dimensions or factors utilized in the articles are safety, loyalty, competitiveness, cleanliness, value for money, speed, lines, the modernization of ships and buses, socioeconomic feature, physical features, service guarantee, servicescape, information materials, updated schedule, the frequency of departures and arrivals, transfer time, environmental awareness, etc. According to the analyzed articles, following explanatory variables have proven to be most significant for the respondents, i.e., have the greatest impact on service quality in passenger transport: staff courtesy (empathy) [30,[32][33][34][35][36], loyalty [37][38][39][40], comfort [41][42][43][44], additional lines [45][46][47][48], physical features [49][50][51], service and safety perception [52,53], value for money, costs [31,54], reliability [55], safety [56], speed [57], the frequency of buses [58], servicescape [59], socioeconomic feature [60], cleanliness [61], and environmental awareness [62]. The articles also indicated certain methods that are generally best suited for evaluating service quality.…”

Departure efficiency evaluation of a comprehensive transport hub based on Wi-Fi probe data and a multilayer hybrid model

“…Jia et al [13] studied the waiting time of passengers through queuing theory and evaluated hub service efficiency with the goal of minimizing the total cost; Lu et al [14] constructed a "time-space" network to guide passengers' outbound behavior. These mainly study the overall departure effect in the hub, but they cannot give targeted evacuation opinions according to different departure modes of passengers.…”