Traffic modeling and simulation on a mass transit line with skip-stop policy

Mass transit operators apply operating plans where less frequented stations are not served by all trains, with the aim to shorten the overall passenger travel time. In this paper, we develop two mathematical models in which we explore the possible benefits from two different skipping-stop strategies. In the first model, some stations are skipped by every second train, with the guarantee that every origin-destination pair is feasible without transfer. In the second model, some stations are also skipped by every second train, but without necessarily guaranteeing that every origin-destination pair is feasible without transfer. We adopt here an existing discrete event modeling approach. To have a better overview of the impact of such “skipping stop” policies, we simulate the train dynamics and analyze the skip-stop effects on the service offered to passengers, with our proposed models, and compare the results with those of the case where all trains stop at all stations. The comparison is done in terms of average train frequency and passenger travel time.