Experimental Research of Pedestrian Walking Behavior

Abstract

To assess the design of walking infrastructure—such as transfer stations, shopping malls, sport stadiums, and others, as well as to support planning of timetables for public transit—tools to aid the designer are needed. To this end, microscopic and macroscopic pedestrian flow models can be and have been applied. To calibrate and validate such models, as well as to gain more insight into the characteristics of pedestrian flows under a variety of circumstances, detailed pedestrian flow data are required. Delft University of Technology has recently carried out experimental research of pedestrian flow. Described is the experimental design (such as determination of process variables and measurement), the resulting microscopic pedestrian data, and some initial results for the narrow bottleneck experiment. Both microscopic and macroscopic characteristics of the pedestrian flows are presented. Interesting first results pertain to the way in which the narrow bottleneck is used under saturated flow conditions, and the use of the space (or, rather, width) upstream of the bottleneck in case of congestion.