Performance improvement of cabin-based transport systems

Cabin-based transport systems such as cable cars are of increasing importance for urban infrastructures. Such systems consist of one line, connecting several stations in tandem. During rush hours, customers are served with full capacity at the first station and consequently, cabins arrive almost fully loaded to the subsequent stations. Customers at these stations experience longer waiting times and a stressful situation. The overall objective of this study is to propose and evaluate alternative access control policies to improve the customer experience in terms of waiting times and a defined “fairness” measure. The model integrates realistic features such as non-stationary arrivals and finite operation time. Therefore, we adopt a finite horizon simulation approach and define the appropriate performance measures. In particular, a service level measure is used to compare the proposed access control policies. The obtained results allow us to determine the policy with the most substantial improvement in the performance of the system compared to the actual situation.