Effect of Right-Hand Traffic Rules on Evacuation Through Multiple Parallel Bottlenecks

Abstract

In a transportation hub complex (THC) in China, ticket entrance gates and station exits are common bottlenecks. Although road traffic in China follows right-hand traffic rules, the influence of right-hand traffic rules on the movement characteristics of pedestrians passing through such facility bottlenecks have been investigated rarely. In this article, simulation experiments are conducted to investigate the effect of THC bottle-necks on pedestrian movement characteristics given the existence of right-hand road traffic rules. Based on the use of a combination of histograms of oriented gradients and support vector machine algorithms, the movement behavior of pedestrians passing through multiple parallel bottlenecks are extracted. A total of 21 scenarios are considered in this simulation experiment, consisting of two-opening and three-opening parallel bottlenecks, where the width of each opening and width of the barriers between adjacent openings are varied. This study provides fundamental data for pedestrian flow passing through multiple parallel bottlenecks, data that can help identify important parameters for the design and improvement of many kinds of pedestrian flow management facilities. Results from the study also will be useful for the development and verification of evacuation models.