Passengers per hour per direction (p/h/d), passengers per hour in peak direction (pphpd) or corridor capacity is a measure of the
route capacity of a
rapid transit
Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT) or heavy rail, commonly referred to as metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport that is generally built in urban areas. A grade separation, grade separated rapid transit line below ground su ...
or
public transport
Public transport (also known as public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) are forms of transport available to the general public. It typically uses a fixed schedule, route and charges a fixed fare. There is no rigid definition of whic ...
system.
Definition

The corridor capacity in the
passenger transport
Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...
field refers to the maximum number of people which can be safely and comfortably transported per unit of time over a certain way with a defined width.
The corridor capacity does not measure the number of vehicles which can be transported over such way, since the nuclear objective of passenger mobility is to transport passengers, not vehicles.

In terms of quantities defined within the
International System of Units
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French ), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official s ...
, the corridor capacity may be measured in units of
, ''i.e.'', the maximum number of passengers per second per meter of the corridor's width.
An approximately equivalent concept in physics is
volumetric flux.
Directional flow

Many public transport systems handle a high directional flow of passengers— often traveling to work in a
city
A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...
in the morning
rush hour
A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour (Australian English, Indian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice e ...
and away from the said city in the late afternoon.
To increase the passenger throughput, many systems can be reconfigured to change the direction of the optimized flow.
A common example is a
railway
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
or
metro station
A metro station or subway station is a train station for a rapid transit system, which as a whole is usually called a "metro" or "subway". A station provides a means for passengers to purchase tickets, board trains, and evacuate the syste ...
with more than two parallel
escalator
An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a Electric motor, motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the st ...
s, where the majority of the escalators can be set to move in one direction.
This gives rise to the measure of the peak-flow rather than a simple average of half of the total capacity.
See also
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References
Public transport
Temporal rates
Transportation planning
Units of temporal rate
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