Investigating the Dynamics of Pedestrian Flow through Different Transition Bottlenecks

Abstract

Congestion and queues are crucial factors in high-passenger flow areas, affecting both traffic efficiency and pedestrian comfort. Ensuring pedestrian safety in bottleneck areas is of utmost importance, and understanding flow characteristics is essential to improving resilience levels. In this study, a comparative experiment was conducted to investigate crowd dynamics in different transition bottleneck types, including straight, right-angle, and curve transitions. Pedestrian flow data were analyzed to examine the impact of transition shape on pedestrian characteristics, such as passing time, speeds, trajectories, and densities within the bottleneck. The results indicate that the curve bottleneck outperforms the other two types, significantly improving traffic capacity, particularly when the pedestrian rate ranges from 0.5 to 1.25 person/s. The curve bottleneck demonstrates the minimum passing time, lowest density, and fastest passing speed. Moreover, under various flow rates, the cumulative maximum pedestrian density of curve bottlenecks is consistently smaller than the other types. These findings offer valuable insights for designing and managing pedestrian flow in bottleneck areas to ensure safety and resilience levels.