Development and Application of Rail Transit Capacity Models in Taiwan

Rail transit systems are often the backbone of the transportation system in major cities; hence, the quality of the systems usually has a substantial impact on overall transportation efficiency. The assessment of the level of service and rail capacity plays an important role in monitoring the performance of an existing system and determining whether to undertake new resource planning projects. In this study the general concepts in the TCRP Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual were adopted, followed by the development of a set of comprehensive capacity models with consideration of modern signaling systems and a complete set of possible movements at critical track layouts. These models were implemented and validated by rail transit operators in Taiwan according to the operational data and practices. The proposed capacity models can help rail transit operators with similar operational environments to monitor their systems’ performance and identify critical bottlenecks.