Behavioral Characteristics of Pedestrian Flow on Stairway at Railway Station

AbstractIndia has witnessed higher level of mobility at urban as well as intercity segments due to improvisation of socio-economic conditions in last two decades. Even though, majority of the intercity travel is made by road based modes, number of passengers traveling by railways is significant on certain highly industrialized corridors. Collection and dispersal of passengers on railway platforms take place through stairways and foot over bridges. Design of these vital elements needs to incorporate the behavior of pedestrian flow to ensure desired level of service as well as safety in case of emergency. As reported in literature, pedestrian flow characteristics are influenced by number of attributes of pedestrian like age, gender, physical dimensions, luggage carried, group size, activity while walking, purpose in addition to the other attributes such as space availability, direction of movement and schedule of train as well. Very limited efforts are made in India to study pedestrian flow behavior in this context.Fluctuations in pedestrian flow depends on schedule of arrival and departure of the train, particularly during the peak hours as there is large passenger flow in short interval of time. Due to limited capacity of pedestrian facility, especially staircases, desired speed cannot be achieved by the pedestrian while walking in crowd with luggage. Higher walking speed is reported on downstairs than upstairs with reduction in speed with increase in pedestrian density. Most of the pedestrian facilities are designed by rule of thumb, especially stairways, largely governed by ideal pedestrian behavior. However behavior of individual pedestrian and hence flow at rail transit stations are dynamic on stairways depending on the factors mentioned above. Present study attempts to highlight the results of the study carried out on pedestrian flow behavior at Vadodara railway station in the state of Gujarat, India. Total 3411 number of pedestrian data are extracted by employing videographic technique. Flow models of speed- flow, speed-density and flow-density are developed to illustrate behaviour of pedestrian stream on stairways of different dimensions