Pedestrian Flow Dynamics Across Urban Land Uses Under Mixed Traffic Conditions

Abstract

Pedestrians are an important part of urban transportation system. Every trip starts and ends with the walk trip. Still, they have neglected part of system. Data was collected at four different locations based on land used activity namely; industrial, educational and mixed land use of residential and industrial. A time-lapse photography technique was adopted for the data collection for two hours in morning and evening peak hour at selected land use on normal working days. The recorded videos were converted to digital files to analysed walking time and the corresponding pedestrian flow data in the laboratory with the aid of a computer. In addition, due to lack of dedicated sidewalk, pedestrian flow data such as speed, flow, density is extracted through virtual trap marked on the carriageway. Further data was analysed for further analysis and development of flow-density relationship.

From the study, it is observed that the male pedestrian dominant at industrial and mixed land use whereas, female was overriding at educational area during observation period. It is also noted that mean walking speed of pedestrian is found to be higher in morning at mix land use and industrial zone compared to the educational area. Study results also revealed that at educational land use walking speed of the children found to be lowest of 0.85m/s. Findings of the present study gives interesting results compared with those given in literature. The pedestrian walking speed is observed to be higher than that reported for other parts of India as well Western countries. It is also noted that at a given flow rate observed density found to be higher at mixed land use. Empirical results and findings highlighted in the study can be useful to understand pedestrian flow behaviour and can also be useful in designing of pedestrian facility base on land use.