Paper Details

TRB 91st Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Event Number:	652
Event Title:	Pedestrian Safety and Operations
Event Date:	Jan 24 2012 7:30PM- 9:30PM
Event Location:	Marriott, Salon 2
Event Description:
Event Agenda:

Impact Analysis of Luggage-Carrying on Pedestrian Traffic (12-4120)

The idea that carrying luggage would have impacts on pedestrian traffic is easily acceptable. However, to what extent the luggage-carrying affects pedestrian traffic has not well been understood yet. This paper selects two pedestrian traffic indicators, i.e., walking speed and space occupation to quantitatively examine the effects of luggage-carrying. Luggage is divided into five levels: none, small, medium, large and trolley case. Then nearly 1,000 speed samples consisting of 22 combinations of luggage-carrying are obtained through video observations of a section of level passageway in Shanghai Metro station. Experimental measurement is also conducted to calculate the space occupation of pedestrians carrying different levels of luggage. By statistical analysis of the observed data, impacts of luggage-carrying on walking speed and space occupation are revealed. Carrying small luggage has little effects on walking speed, however pedestrians with medium, large luggage or trolley cases, walk significantly slower than those without any luggage. On average, compared with no luggage, small, medium, large luggage and trolley case reduce mean walking speed by 2%-3%, 5%-8%, 10-14%, and 3-8% respectively. The effects of luggage-carrying on space occupation are much more striking than those on walking speed. Based on the experimental measurement, small luggage increases the space occupation of pedestrians by 50-100%. Medium and large luggage increases the space occupation by 100-150% and 300-650% respectively. Research results of this paper call for a special attention and appropriate adjustment for planning and designing pedestrian traffic mixed with noticeable amount of pedestrians who carry luggage.

Authors
     Ye, Jianhong , Portland State University
     Chen, Xiaohong , Tongji University, China
     Jian, Nanjing , University of Wisconsin, Madison