Impact Analysis of Human Factors on Pedestrian Traffic Characteristics -- Walking Speed Revisited

摘要

Pedestrian traffic characteristics are affected simultaneously by many factors. This challenges theimpact analyses of a certain factor on pedestrian traffic. To obtain accurate effects of each factor,this paper argues that the interferential impacts of all other factors should be excluded when asingle factor is under investigation. Walking speed was selected as the analysis object ofpedestrian traffic characteristics. Three important human factors, i.e. pedestrian gender, age andluggage-carrying, were investigated as for their impacts on walking speed. Each factor wasdivided into several levels for elaborate impact analysis. Through video observations of a sectionof level passageway in Shanghai Metro station, nearly 1,000 speed samples were obtained. Thesespeed samples include twenty-two different combinations of gender, age and luggage. Bystatistical analysis of these speed combinations, impacts of gender, age, and luggage on walkingspeed were revealed individually. Except for older pedestrians, males walk faster than females by5%-7%. Middle-aged pedestrians walk slower than the young by 6%-8%, and older pedestrianswalk slower than the young by 18%-24%. Compared with no luggage, small luggage onlyreduces mean walking speed by 2%-3%. For medium luggage, large luggage and trolley case, therates of descend for walking speeds were 5%-8%, 10-14%, and 3-8% respectively. The collecteddata, proposed methodology and revealed results could be helpful to comprehend the pedestriantraffic characteristics and to set up appropriate standards in pedestrian planning and design.