3211 Examination on Design of Room for Energy Saving Small Urban Transport through Comfort Evaluation Modeling

Abstract

A high energy-saving new small urban transport system "Eco-Ride" moves under potential energy and has merits of low initial costs and high flexibility to install. To improve the comfort and accessibility of vehicle for Eco-Ride, a design evaluation method of passenger rooms has been proposed by combining the comfort and accessibility evaluation models for light rail vehicles and automobiles. The results of boarding experiments at full-scale Eco-ride mockup has been applied for the quantitative comparison of design layouts for passenger rooms of Eco-ride experimental trains. No statistically significant difference in comfort evaluation values of seats was found between the full-scale mockup and the manufactured experimental train about the experimented seat arrangement. Evaluation formula of passenger rooms is composed from experiments.