Analysis of Walking and Route-Choice Behavior of Pedestrians inside Public Transfer Stations : A Study on how pedestrians behave in the approaching vicinity of level-change facilities,and how it affects their walking and route-choice behavior

Pedestrian walking and choice behavior presented was first studied by Fruin in 1971, and since then a lot of research have been carried out in order to understand how humans move and what does make them make choices and obtain certain patterns. In relation to pedestrians, a significant bottleneck inside public stations evaluated by research are the level-change facilities, as Stair Walks and Escalators. The aim of this research is studying how pedestrian behave in the vicinity to stairways and escalators, and how does that affect pedestrian choice, speed and acceleration when choosing one of the two facilities. Also, with a need for more data on pedestrian traffic, further data collection is a big requirement to analyze their behavior and use as tools in future measures. At last, how to optimize the movement of pedestrians in relation to level changes, considering the effects of the movements observed. Two case studies were analysed, Stockholm Central Station and Uppsala Central Station.The study compares data collection methods, tracking methods and previous studies to better fit the scope of this research. The data is backed up from previous research and explains which method better fitted the options available. As a result, video data collection was chosen to collect the data, a semi-automatic tracking software called T-analyst was used to extract speed, trajectories and acceleration from the videos, and microsimulation modelling from VISSIM further investigated different design options to optimize the overall performance and improve travel time in the same area. The analysis found out that there was a possibility to increase the overall performance of the location in higher flow levels, where the most significant queues could be seen, since there was the possibility to achieve higher speeds by modifying the width and position of the stair walks, which allow for a smaller queue in both directions