Methodology for calculation of minimum transfer time in the transport hub

Abstract

The most important element in railway passenger transport is a customer – traveller, who requires the transport from one place to another. A basic precondition for accomplishing the main requirement – transport, is making the complete offer which provides not only transport, but also other associated services. Practically, there are many associated criteria of transport, for example safety, duration, price, reliability, comfort and complementary services. Passenger transport is generally considered as an activity, which arises as the consequence of spatial division of places, where people are in exact time and their need to move. Motivators for moving could be commuting – job or education, dealing with personal or working matters, travelling for vacation – hiking, sport, health, cultural and social facilities, visiting relatives and friends. Requirements for transport of passengers originate in the need to move, while the passenger transport is dependent on the willingness of travelling. In passenger transport, there are mostly individual passengers, so it is difficult to determine all transport requirements. The paper is focused on one of the key factors of passenger transportation - connectivity of trains. Connectivity of passenger trains and other means of transport can be distinguished also from temporal and spatial point of view. Temporal connectivity is such sequence of arrivals and departures of different passenger trains and other means of transport, which allows changing the different passenger vehicles easily in regard to necessary time. Spatial connectivity means the distance between two passenger vehicles, among which the passenger is moving. In the paper, there is described the general methodology for calculation of minimum transfer time in the railway station. Railway passenger station is some kind of transport hub – a starting and finishing point for flows of passengers. Passengers have the opportunity to change the train type from long-haul train to regional train or contrariwise or simply enter or leave the system of railway transport. In the methodology, all necessary aspects are taken into account.