To establish a train operation diagram convenient for passengers, it is necessary to grasp and assess the flow of passengers on the lines involved, that is, which train sections a large percentage of passengers make use of and so on. To this end, it is desirable to establish a technique to predict the flow of passengers towards the revised train operation diagram in detail (including the number of passengers on each train in each section). It is also important to establish a evaluation method of train operation diagrams quantitatively from passengers' viewpoints.

This gives rise to a need to guess which trains will be used by passengers and the train congestion/delay caused by their boarding/alighting behavior. To achieve this, the RTRI has developed a system to predict train operation and passenger behavior under a certain train operation diagram from origin-destination (OD) data (the data of origin station, destination station and time of day when each passenger use trains), obtained from automatic ticket-checking machines, traffic censuses in large cities, or other sources. The system can predict the behavior of each passenger from departure to arrival station while reflecting their preferences (to arrive at the destination as quickly as possible, avoid changing trains and avoid train congestion). Train delays cause congestion, which in turn causes further delays; this snowball effect can also be reproduced. Figure 1 shows the estimated degree of congestion and train delay represented on a train operation diagram. Figure 2 shows the route layout diagram related to the representation in Fig. 1.

This system enables the evaluation of train operation diagrams from passengers' viewpoints. By using the disutility index, the inconvenience of each passenger in travelling from the origin station to the destination towards the train operation diagram is summed into a value.) based on the travel time, and the inconvenience from changing trains and train congestion he/she experienced. These values can be added together for all passenger to create an evaluation value for the entire train operation diagram from passengers' viewpoints (Fig. 3). In addition to the revising plans of train operation diagram, the system can be used to evaluate train rescheduling plan when unexpected disturbance of train operation happens.