Effective Width of Pedestrian Corridors

Abstract

Pedestrians walking in corridors tend to maintain a clearance from the walls and any stationary obstacles that they pass, thus, space within corridors is never fully utilized. A number of researchers have therefore suggested that an effective width reduction should be subtracted from the gross width to obtain an effective corridor for design purposes. There are discrepancies however, in the magnitude of the effective width reductions that are suggested in the literature. A proposed definition and method for calculating effective width reductions from pedestrian data is presented. Pedestrian distributions observed in a survey conducted in a pedestrian tunnel at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, were used to calculate effective width reductions under various conditions. The reductions calculated for walls ranged between 5.5 in. and 8.7 in. (140 mm and 220 mm). This is less than one third of the 18 in. (46 cm) suggested by most researchers. Experimentation with obstacles,such as a waste recepticle adjacent to one wall, resulted in even lower effective width reductions. It is concluded that effective width reductions generally assumed in current design practices are overestimated.