Dwell time (transportation)

A variety of different factors determine how long this takes, including the size of the door on the train, the number of passengers waiting to board, or the step height from the platform to the floor of the car of the vehicle.

[4] Metro rail systems attempt to solve the problem of long dwell times by designing large numbers of doors in the rolling stock.

Another solution is to increase the width of doors, but that is often ineffective as there are other bottlenecks within the rail vehicle, such as stairs, or a large number of other passengers not boarding or alighting.

Narrow platforms, structural elements in front of doors, or generally poor access in and out of the station, can all have an effect on dwell times.

Density imbalance along the platform and between vehicles is mainly due to human and motivational factors (minimising distance and time at the arrival)[7] In the case of bus transit in particular, one cause for major delays at stops is passengers using a wheelchair lift.