Sharing Tracks With High Speed Trains in Urban Area: Risk due to Drivers and Pedestrian Perception

2020 Joint Rail Conference ◽

10.1115/jrc2020-8106 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Oren Masory

Keyword(s):

Urban Area ◽

High Speed ◽

Human Perception ◽

Point Of View ◽

Time To Contact ◽

High Speed Trains ◽

Rail Traffic

Abstract Sharing operations of high-speed passenger and heavy slow freight trains on the same rail tracks presents additional risks to vehicle and pedestrians who cross the tracks. This is due to increase in rail traffic at crossing; drivers and pedestrians overestimate the amount of time they have to cross the intersection in front of a higher speed train; and due to the fact that circuited crossings are not adaptable and might lead to confusion and bad decisions. From human perception point of view these accidents happen in particular when the high speed trains were just introduced since the drivers as well as the pedestrians are used to interact with slower trains. Looming is a major factor that contributes to the perception error experiences by a driver or pedestrian. On one hand a faster train is being detected at farther distance than a slower one but its time to contact (the time it will reach the crossing) is shorter. Thus, a pedestrian might think that he has enough time to cross the railroad but actually he does not. Horn sound has the same effect on human perception. This paper discusses issues related to human perception which contribute to accidents in these cases.

Download Full-text

A real-time control method-based simulation for high-speed trains on large-scale rail network

International Journal of Modern Physics C ◽

10.1142/s0129183117501261 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (10) ◽

pp. 1750126 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Yutong Liu ◽

Chengxuan Cao ◽

Yaling Zhou ◽

Ziyan Feng

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Traffic Flow ◽

High Speed ◽

Large Scale ◽

Simulation Method ◽

Real Time Control ◽

Rail Network ◽

Time Control ◽

High Speed Trains ◽

Rail Traffic

In this paper, an improved real-time control model based on the discrete-time method is constructed to control and simulate the movement of high-speed trains on large-scale rail network. The constraints of acceleration and deceleration are introduced in this model, and a more reasonable definition of the minimal headway is also presented. Considering the complicated rail traffic environment in practice, we propose a set of sound operational strategies to excellently control traffic flow on rail network under various conditions. Several simulation experiments with different parameter combinations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the control simulation method. The experimental results are similar to realistic environment and some characteristics of rail traffic flow are also investigated, especially the impact of stochastic disturbances and the minimal headway on the rail traffic flow on large-scale rail network, which can better assist dispatchers in analysis and decision-making. Meanwhile, experimental results also demonstrate that the proposed control simulation method can be in real-time control of traffic flow for high-speed trains not only on the simple rail line, but also on the complicated large-scale network such as China’s high-speed rail network and serve as a tool of simulating the traffic flow on large-scale rail network to study the characteristics of rail traffic flow.

Download Full-text