Understanding Platform Overcrowding at Bus Rapid Transit Stations

Platform overcrowding is a very common but relatively poorly understood occurrence at most bus rapid transit (BRT) systems in cities in the developing world. Most literature on BRT capacity focuses on vehicle throughput for different types of lane and station configurations; relatively little is known about how different station layouts handle specific volumes of boarding and alighting passengers. In this paper, this gap in knowledge was addressed by building a microscopic simulation model to test the ability of a typical Latin American BRT station (median, high-platform, one bus bay per direction) to handle various volumes of passengers under different scenarios. With this modeling exercise, areas in a station most likely to experience overcrowding were first identified: the median refuge island at the main entrance and the turnstiles. The station performance at those critical points was then evaluated for different passenger volumes, with mainly pedestrian density (persons/m2) as an indicator. Results i...