The use of Monte Carlo simulation to determine the optimal configuration for minibus taxi loading areas.

Abstract

Paper presented at the 32nd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 8-11 July 2013 "Transport and Sustainable Infrastructure", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

National guidelines for the design of minibus public transport facilities provide general advice for determining the number of loading berths, based on the number of vehicles servicing a specific destination, or for choosing between parallel island and oval island layouts, without taking the specific demand and loading patterns of a rank into account. This paper provides quantitative guidelines on the determination of the number of loading berths that are required and the layout that would provide the best operational efficiency under a range of loading conditions. A simulation method was developed and calibrated to simulate passenger queuing and boarding, for both parallel and serial boarding of vehicles, which allowed us to test the impact of factors like passenger volumes, fleet size, loading and queuing behaviour of passengers (e.g. whether single or multiple vehicles are boarded from the same queue), and the shunting time between vehicles, on a number of measures of effectiveness. We offer recommendations regarding the threshold values of demand and vehicle operations that can be used by practitioners when considering the appropriate layout of a facility and the number of berths (loading areas) that would be required. These findings will be of particular interest to designers and engineers involved with the design or upgrading of minibus taxi facilities.