Trajectories and walking velocity of pedestrian walking through angled-corridors: A unidirectional scenario

Abstract

When comparing corner and straight corridor to acute- A nd obtuse- A ngled-corridors, effects of later types of corridors on the pedestrian dynamics is rarely studied. Rationally, there will be changes to the pedestrian walking behavior when approaching and walking through angled-corridor due to the turning angle. This could trigger restrictions to the flow of walkers and causing congestion near that turning angle. Hence, this study is purposely to investigate empirically the characteristics of pedestrians when walking through different angled-corridors (60°, 90° and 135°). Controlled experiment of pedestrians walking through built angled-corridors was conducted at the Multipurpose Hall of USM, involving 60 local undergraduate students. Thirty walking tasks were performed by considering different number of pedestrians (NOP: 1, 15, 30, 45 and 60). Video-based tracking of pedestrian's trajectories walking through angled-corridors was performed and effects on walking characteristics and velocity were discussed. It is found that, pedestrian not necessarily choose the shortest path while walking, but prefer to occupy all space available to suit their own speed and comfort. As the degree of corridor increases, the impacts to pedestrian walking velocity become less. However, in response to the increase in number of pedestrians, the development of changing track can be witnessed.