Standard pedestrian equivalent factors: A new approach to analyzing pedestrian flow

The design and planning of pedestrian walking facilities must be undertaken in the context of the prevailing and future local traffic composition. The latter is changing rapidly as a result of demographic changes such as ageing population and obesity trends. If the traffic consists of a significant proportion of various pedestrian groups, some form of adjustment factor may need to be introduced in the dimensioning process. This paper introduces the concept of standard pedestrian equivalent factors as a practical systematic methodology when dealing with heterogeneity in pedestrian flow. Pedestrian micro-simulation was employed to evaluate hypothetical pedestrian proportions to generate corresponding flow relationships. To estimate the factors, the equivalent time-space concept was utilized in order to consider the effects of the differences in physical and operational characteristics of pedestrians particularly walking speed and body sizes. These characteristics were varied across different flow conditions, walkway widths and proportions of other pedestrian types in the study sensitivity analysis. A case study was also conducted by utilizing field-collected data in order to illustrate the significance and relevance of the methodology in determining walkway widths