An Approach for Determining Seating Capacity of 12m City Buses Based on Passenger Density

The projected area of seated passengers on board is investigated to provide an optimal solution for the seating configuration to adapt to the passenger flow in the operational periods and improve the serviceability of city buses. The criteria regarding whether the current trip is a peak shift are defined, with a passenger density index proposed for optimizing the seating capacity in operational periods considering both standing and seated passengers. Besides, the work analyzes the effects of the number of people on board and the peak coefficient on the optimal solution of the capacity of seats. An approach is proposed to determine the optimal capacity of seats with a single seat configuration of all the 12 m city buses, with the correspondence between capacity of seats allocated to the bus lines and the operational periods discussed. The feasibility of the present approach is demonstrated through a case study. Moreover, the applicability of three main seat configurations to the operational periods and the attributes of the bus lines are compared. The results show that the projected area of a seated passenger is 0.35 m² in the city buses in Xi'an and the peak coefficient has a more significant effects on the capacity of seats of the 12 m city buses. The recommended value of the capacity of seats of the 12 m city buses preferably ranges from 21 to 43 seats. When the deviation of the actual capacity of seats with the optimal solution is controlled within 2 seats and the specifications of seat configuration are considered, which adapted to the bus line can achieve the desired effects.