Man-machine interactive guidance for urban railway networks

Abstract A passenger requires precise and timely guidance information about his path from origin to destination on an urban railway network, e.g. the shortest time path and the minimal cost path. Such two paths are not easy to estimate because the former path is dynamically varied in time-dependent fashion by the ununiformity of train traffic density on time and by the mixture of different train traffic scheduling systems of several companies and the latter path may be composed of one or more lines operated by several companies with their different fare systems. This paper clarifies smooth and effective interaction steps for the guidance for urban railway networks, enumerates I/O devices suitable for the effective guidance, enumerates data items to be required for the effective guidance, clarifies the relationships among them, describes the problems in solving the shortest time path and the minimal cost path, shows our newly devised two analysis algorithms, and shows the overview of the pilot system of our man-machine guidance system in terms of a graphic display.