Reducing the impact of speed dispersion on subway corridor flow
Introduction
With urbanization and subway network expansion in China, the average daily passenger traffic (ADPT) of the subway has been growing. Speed dispersion, caused by the variation in pedestrian walking speeds, frequently occurs in the subway, with the potential to substantially affect pedestrians’ sense of comfort and cause serious safety hazards. A new task for subway operational management is to provide passengers with a safe and efficient walking experience.
Studies have been developed to use advanced data collection technologies to characterize pedestrian traffic for improving the efficiency of pedestrian flow (Hughes, 2002, Guo et al., 2010, Ye et al., 2008). Pedestrian speed has been studied by analyzing characteristics such as pedestrian gender (Shi et al., 2007, Young, 1999), pedestrian age (Fitzpatrick et al., 2006, Montufar et al., 2007, Young, 1999), the effects of carrying luggage (Ye et al., 2012), and the pedestrian's social group (Zhao et al., 2016). Other studies have explored environmental conditions such as different facilities (Al-Azzawi and Raeside, 2007, Fujiyama and Tyler, 2010, Sun et al., 2017), passenger flow weaving (Sun et al., 2014), weather and season (Aultman-Hall et al., 2009), and the evacuation environment (Zhao et al., 2017). With the rise of mobile phone usage, the adverse influence of phone distraction on pedestrian traffic has also been studied (Bungum et al., 2005, Dunbar et al., 2004, Hatfield and Murphy, 2007, Schwebel et al., 2009, Stavrinos et al., 2009, Whitebread and Neilson, 1999). These studies showed that different types of pedestrians, pedestrian experiences, and pedestrians environments result in different pedestrian speeds.
The influence of speed dispersion in traffic has been well studied (Chung and Recker, 2014, Graham and Chenu, 1962). Shankar and Mannering (1998) investigated the fundamental factors of speed dispersion and explored the relationship between speed dispersion and average speed. Shankar and Mannering (1998) proposed a structural model that related mean speed and speed deviation. Wang et al. (2007) suggested that speed dispersion could be defined as either the standard deviation of the single speed or the average speed difference between two adjacent vehicles.
Studies have also focused on the influence of speed dispersion on traffic accidents (Helbing, 1996, Hoogendoorn and Bovy, 2000). Models for the relationship between traffic speed and accident rates (or casualty rates) have been built to analyze the impact of speed dispersion qualitatively and quantitatively (Cassidy, 1998, Del Castillo and Benitez, 1995, Liu and Popoff, 1997, Shankar and Mannering, 1998). An earlier study found that speed dispersion plays a key role in various ways: for instance, traffic safety studies have shown that pedestrian safety is threatened by speed dispersion, which also affects travel reliability and operating efficiency (Chung and Recker, 2014).
The study of speed dispersion has been an important area of study. However, the optimal management of speed dispersion which aims to improve the stability of traffic flow and avoid traffic collisions has rarely been studied, especially in pedestrian traffic. This study explored the characteristics of pedestrian speed and behavior in the subway. First, unidirectional pedestrian traffic flow in the subway was investigated through analyzing field videos. Second, three management techniques – hanging traffic signs, yellow marking, and installing a guardrail were used to test efficiency and safety in a subway station environment. Pedestrian experiments with four levels of pedestrian volumes were conducted to mimic a real-world subway corridor. The effectiveness of the management methods was demonstrated through a before-and-after comparison, and the speed and turning angle can be considered as analysis parameters. Third, the optimal position of the guardrail was explored by conducting pedestrian experiments. Finally, the experiments were compared with a real subway station environment for authenticity.
Section snippets
Analysis of speed dispersion in a corridor
A survey was conducted in a subway corridor where speed dispersion frequently occurs. Uncongested corridor was chosen as the primary object to take into account the micro characteristics of the pedestrians. Fig. 1 shows the speed in the corridor and the fluctuations in speed and path. As shown in Table 1, there was a significant variation in pedestrian speed. The minimum pedestrian speed was 0.419 m/s while the maximum pedestrian speed and the speed standard deviation were about 2.29 m/s and
Investigating the impact of management
The available methods for control measurements were: installing traffic signs, drawing a yellow line, and installing a guardrail. Because the process of installing traffic signs does not occupy ground space, especially with the use of hanging signs, it has been extensively employed in highways and has played a significant role in distinguishing different car speeds. Since yellow lines drawn on the ground are easily recognized by drivers, they have been commonly applied to highways, as well as
Setting experiment
After determining the guardrail setting as the best management method, the guardrail's location remained an uncertain parameter. Based on the theory of pedestrian traffic behavior (Lam et al., 2002), the basic walking width of a single pedestrian is 0.75 m, and the experimental corridor width is only 3 m; therefore, there are a maximum of three possible guardrail locations. The first choice for the guardrail location was to allow1/3 of the corridor's width for fast pedestrians (Scenario A),
The authenticity of the experiment
The authenticity and the availability of the experimental scenarios were the most important and fundamental factors in this research. Therefore, before the formal experiment, a pilot experiment, in a similar environment with similar pedestrian volume, was conducted to compare the consistency of pedestrian behavioral characteristics with an actual subway station environment. The results of the comparison are shown in Table 6. In t-tests, all P values were greater than 0.05, indicating that there
Conclusions and recommendations
This study explored the characteristics of and potential management methods to enhance the speed dispersion of pedestrian traffic flow in subway corridors. By analyzing the characteristics of the pedestrian traffic through qualitative and quantitative methods, the relationship between pedestrian management and pedestrian traffic was investigated.
Characteristic of Speed Dispersion: The researchers analyzed the gradient of speed in the corridor of the Beijing Subway. The pattern of pedestrian
Acknowledgements
This work was partially funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51308017), Beijing Nova Program (Grant No. Z141106001814110), Funding Project for Academic Human Resources Development in Institutions of Higher Learning under the Jurisdiction of Beijing Municipality, and Science and Technology Program of Beijing (D161100005616001).
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