Abstract
This paper presents an embarking and disembarking process for the hyperloop, a future high-speed transportation of passengers and goods in tubes. A concept of the (dis)embarking process has been designed and tested with two experiments. The first experiment was performed to compare the new concept to one that is more similar to the current embarking setup of trains on the aspects of efficiency and experience. Participants were asked to (dis)embark in the test settings that simulate the new concept and the conventional situation with luggage. As a result, new passenger flow saves 40% of the time for vehicles to stay on the platform. Follow-up questionnaires and interviews with the participants show that the proposed passenger flow gives a better experience in terms of efficiency, seamlessness and friendliness. The new solution increases the number of doors, which increases the manufacturing complexity and the chance of failure. Narrowing the door size minimizes this effect. Subsequently, a second experiment has been carried out to study the influence of door width on (dis)embarking efficiency and passenger experience following a similar method. It turns out that narrowing the door width does not noticeably influence the embarking time, but the disembarking time does increase. Interviews show that half of the participants sense a negative experience with narrower doors, while the other half do not notice a difference.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Prof. P. Vink for the latest information in the field of aviation passenger experience. They appreciate that J. Li pointed out the interesting study by Helbing et al. (2002 and 2005). Special thanks to Buccaneer Delft for providing the testing environment and connections to the participants.
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Appendix: Questionnaire for Experiment 2
Appendix: Questionnaire for Experiment 2
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Li, D., van der Vegte, W.F., Geuze, M., van der Meijs, M., Mastrigt, S.Hv. (2019). Studying a New Embarking and Disembarking Process for Future Hyperloop Passengers. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 823. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96074-6_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96074-6_23
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