During COVID-19, certain means were proposed to improve crowd management in the Birmingham New Street railway station. To validate the current system of crowd management in the station, this paper examines the rail passenger flow in the concourse of the Birmingham New Street railway station and the passenger interactions and queueing phenomena associated with it, mainly at the ticket machines, offices and gates, prior to and during the implementation of COVID-19 measures. The passenger behaviour in the concourse of the station was simulated using the SIMUL8 event-based simulation modelling package. Three different scenarios were modelled to analyse the changes and impacts from pre-COVID-19 and within the COVID-19 context. The results revealed that passenger behaviour in railway stations is changing due to COVID-19. Specifically, passengers are more likely to buy tickets using their smartphones or online prior to or whilst entering the station so that they can go through the station concourse with minimal queuing times and avoid contact with a facility of common use at the station, whereas those without tickets are more likely to be in a queue to buy their tickets in the station. For pre-COVID, the results showed that even with a reduced number of ticket machines, overcrowding inside the station was unlikely to occur, as 80% of all passengers in the simulation completed service within a 15-minute time frame. However, during implementation of COVID-19 measures, as the number of passengers using the station dropped significantly and more passengers bought their tickets using their smartphones and/or online, queueing times were also shorter, and thus passengers spent less time in the system. The simulation results were in accordance with the expected practice; hence the effectiveness of the simulation model was verified. Overall, as a result of this study, the following suggestions to improve crowd management in a railway passenger station concourse are proposed: encourage passengers to purchase tickets on their smartphones, remove ticket gates and replace them with sensors, and provide a one-way passenger flow system in the main concourse of the station.

This research examines the effects of urban rail transit (URT) on city growth measured by the increases in population, gross domestic product (GDP) and employment rate. Forty cities which have URT systems by the end of 2019 in China are taken as investigated samples. Research data related to URT extent, population, GDP, employment rate and five types of control variables which are individual, people's living, economic, science and education, and infrastructure are utilized and their applicability is verified. Panel data models are applied to analyze the effect of URT on city growth, and the robustness of the model estimation results is assessed. The study further analyzes the heterogeneity in the effects of URT systems on cities with different economic development levels. The estimated results indicate that the opening and expansion of URT have a positive effect on the population of the city. URT promotes the development of the urban economy and increases employment opportunities. Nevertheless, because of population migration, URT has little effect on the employment rate. In addition, the positive effect of URT on urban growth is most obvious for cities with a relatively high level of economic development.

With the rapid development of China’s economy and society, China’s railway transportation system has been dramatically improved in terms of its scale and operational efficiency. To uncover the underlying relationship between urbanization and railway network structure, this paper examines the evolution of China’s railway transportation system from 1999 to 2019 by applying complex network theory. The results show that China’s railway network (CRN) has become more connected, more “small-world” and more heterogeneous since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on the train flow and train travel distance, the evolutionary course of CRN is found to undergo two apparent stages, with a turning point in 2007. By calculating the regional railway connection index (RRCI), it is revealed that the planned core cities in different regions act as bridges connecting the regions to the rest of the whole network.

To alleviate decision-making pressure on rail transit dispatchers in the emergency handling process, this work sorts out the scenario elements of rail transit emergency cases, establishes a scenario element system, and uses the information weight method to determine the weight of each scenario element. Based on the information of the key decision points, the complete process of emergencies is divided into various scenarios, and an emergency case representation model is constructed. The model establishes a database of historical emergency cases in rail transit, utilizes the scenarios as the search object to match the similarity of emergencies, and provides the decision-making support information to handle the current emergencies. Furthermore, the model constructed in this paper is subjected to an actual emergency case for analysis and calculation, which verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed model.