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This paper studies the dynamic performance of subway transportation systems. A three-layer model, consisting of a rail layer, a train layer, and a passenger layer, is proposed to describe the structure and operation of a metro system. Two parameters, namely, time efficiency and maximum load ratio, are proposed to assess the transport efficiency and the train utilization rate, respectively. Case studies of the metro networks in Beijing, Tokyo, and Hong Kong show that the time efficiency decreases nonlinearly with the increase of vehicle resource and passenger demand, whereas maximum load ratio varies in an opposite manner. For the three metro networks under study, the Tokyo metro system has the highest time efficiency when passengers adopt a shortest-path (SP) routing strategy, while the Hong Kong system’s highest time efficiency exceeds the others’ when passengers adopt a minimum-transfer-path (MTP) strategy. In general, the maximum time efficiency is higher when passengers adopt SP routing rather than MTP routing. Moreover, the Beijing metro system has the highest maximum load ratio, regardless of the passengers’ routing behavior. This paper can be applied to a metro network to optimize the train departure interval under a certain passenger entrance rate, with the aim to maximize the time efficiency and maximum load ratio. Our model permits assessment of the operational effectiveness of metro systems, which helps the metro operators to improve the performance and reduce the cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed the world-wide emergence of mega-metropolises with incredibly huge populations. Understanding residents mobility patterns, or urban dynamics, thus becomes crucial for building modern smart cities. In this paper, we propose a Neighbor-Regularized and context-aware Non-negative Tensor Factorization model (NR-cNTF) to discover interpretable urban dynamics from urban heterogeneous data. Different from many existing studies concerned with prediction tasks via tensor completion, NR-cNTF focuses on gaining urban managerial insights from spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal patterns. This is enabled by high-quality Tucker factorizations regularized by both POI-based urban contexts and geographically neighboring relations. NR-cNTF is also capable of unveiling long-term evolutions of urban dynamics via a pipeline initialization approach. We apply NR-cNTF to a real-life data set containing rich taxi GPS trajectories and POI records of Beijing. The results indicate: 1) NR-cNTF accurately captures four kinds of city rhythms and seventeen spatial communities; 2) the rapid development of Beijing, epitomized by the CBD area, indeed intensifies the job-housing imbalance; 3) the southern areas with recent government investments have shown more healthy development tendency. Finally, NR-cNTF is compared with some baselines on traffic prediction, which further justifies the importance of urban contexts awareness and neighboring regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operation optimization for modern subway trains usually requires the speed curve optimization and speed curve tracking simultaneously. For the speed curve optimization, a multi-objective seeking issue should be addressed by considering the requirements of energy saving, punctuality, accurate parking, and comfortableness at the same time. But most traditional searching methods lack in efficiency or tend to fall into the local optimum. For the speed curve tracking, the widely applied proportional integral differential (PID) and fuzzy controllers rely on complicated parameter tuning, whereas robust adaptive methods can hardly ensure the finite-time convergence strictly, and thus are not suitable for applications in fixed time intervals of trains. To address the above-mentioned two problems, this paper presents a novel approach for speed curve seeking and tracking control. First, we present the random reinforcement genetic algorithm (GA) algorithm to avoid the local optimum efficiently. Then, a sliding mode controller is developed for speed curve tracking with bounded disturbance. The Lyapunov theory is adopted to prove that the system can be stabilized in the finite time. Finally, using the real datasets of Yizhuang Line in Beijing Subway, the proposed approach is validated, demonstrating its effectiveness and superiorities for the operation optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]