PASSENGER WAITING TIME AT TRANSIT STOPS

This paper attempts to clarify some of the probabilistic issues of passenger behaviour at transit stops. The paper is comprised of two parts. First, the distribution of waiting time is analysed for the case of random passenger arrivals. This distribution is described by two families of headway distributions which can approach the two extremes, the deterministic and the exponential cases. Second, the mean waiting time formulation is interpreted using observed data from two studies. Explicit expressions for the mean waiting time are derived for the case of a suburban rail station. (TRRL)