Empirical investigation on turning behavior of passengers in subway station

Abstract

Turning junction of subway station is bottleneck being prone to congestion. Speeds of passengers fluctuate in these zones, which will diminish walking efficiency of the passengers and level of service (LOS) of facility. This paper explores the correlation between junction width and walking efficiency of passengers in subway station. Firstly, walking trajectories of passengers at junctions are abstracted from video footages with object detection and tracking algorithm. The parameters of walking behaviors of passengers in conditions with various junction widths are measured. With the calibrated turning social force model (TSFM), walking processes of passengers are simulated, and the optimal widths of junctions are estimated. Results show that the farther away from the inner turning boundary edge (TBE) is, the earlier the individual starts to turn. When junction width is more than 3 m, the walking efficiency will not be higher with junction widening during peak hours. The optimal width of junction is 5.41 m in the passenger-merging scenario with mean arrival rate of 1.67 ped ⋅ s−1.