Abstract
Route choice is one of the main challenging problems from theoretical and practical viewpoints in the realm of pedestrian behaviour. A prime underlying concern of researchers in this field is to identify criteria or discover principles that pedestrians use to select their routes. Despite the fact that there are infinite possible routes between two given destinations in space, pedestrians in real situations tend to choose a certain finite number of available trajectories. As a consequence, there is a high demand for theoretical framework and models to describe route choice. The fundamental assumption is that pedestrians follow a route over which effort is optimized. The existing criteria in the literature to predict route choice of pedestrians are mainly related to route length and travel time. In this paper, we consider physical effort as a new criterion, which indicates the pedestrian’s metabolic energy expenditure that pedestrians may consume during their walk from origin to destination. A case study is included to illustrate the pertinent concepts and ideas introduced. Our discussion concludes with an overview of how this reconceptualization builds the foundations for a model that will enable improved operations, planning, and design of public transport facilities. Key words: Pedestrian behavior, route choice, metabolic energy expenditure, effort, trajectory.
Highlights
The problem of pedestrian route choice (PRC) is of central importance and highly-demanding to the fields of transportation
The route choice has been assumed to be the result of minimizing some quantities such as selecting the shortest route, the quickest or the least effort route
The fundamental concept of physical effort consumed over travel is used here and applied to solve the pedestrian route choice problems
Summary
The problem of pedestrian route choice (PRC) is of central importance and highly-demanding to the fields of transportation. Route choice models are based on the minimum distance, that is, pedestrians tend to choose the shortest route (Ciolek, 1978; Vaziri et al, 1983; Seneviratne and Morrall, 1985; Hewawasam, 2013). Some studies have shown that a pedestrians route choice model choose the route depends on the minimum time from origin to destination, this route often be the shortest route (Seneviratne and Morrall, 1985; Guy et al, 2010). The model we propose here is comprehensive and can handle pedestrian walking through grass, mud, hills or other surfaces that impede movements by incorporating these environmental factors into the energy functions. Pedestrians choose among the possible routes based on their route cost which can be indicated by time, traveled distance or consumed effort.
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