Molyneaux, N., Scarinci, R., and Bierlaire, M. (2019)

The impact of counter-flow on pedestrian walking times

19th Swiss Transport Research Conference, Ascona, Switzerland

Exploiting the full potential of pedestrian infrastructures is becoming vital in many environments which cannot be easily expanded to cope with the increasing demand. This is particularly true of train stations in many dense cities since space is limited. One solution to improve the level-of-service experienced by pedestrians is to regulate and control their movements with a dynamic traffic management system. In order to develop and test pedestrian specific control strategies a simulation laboratory is implemented. This numerical environment allows the validation of two control strategies dedicated to pedestrian dynamics: gating and flow separators. The effectiveness of these strategies has been investigated firstly by using a proof-of-concept setup to explore the sensitivity to some parameters, and secondly by simulating a subpart of the train station in Lausanne (Switzerland). Both strategies achieve their respective goals by preventing excessive congestion and decreasing the pedestrian's walking times.