Exploring the Effects of Different Walking Strategies on Bi-Directional Pedestrian Flow

Three types of different walking behaviors (right preference, conformity, and space priority) are taken into account to model bi-directional pedestrian flow in the channel with cellular-automata formulation. The fundamental diagrams of R-pedestrian flow, C-pedestrian flow, and S-pedestrian flow are obtained from the simulation result to analyze the effect of these behaviors on bi-direction flow. The C-pedestrian flow has the minimum critical density and R-pedestrian flow has the highest, while the S-pedestrian flow has higher average-speed than other two types of pedestrian flow under the same density. Further, through the study of pedestrian distribution in the channel and the proportion of pedestrians not able to move to the front cell, reasons leading to different characteristics of these three types of pedestrian flow are analyzed. Moreover, the simulation experiment based on BehaviorSearch is designed to explore the optimal percentages of R-pedestrian, C-pedestrian, and S-pedestrian in pedestrian flow. The result of the experiment shows that the condition that makes the highest average speed of pedestrian flow is not that pedestrian flow consists of purely one type of pedestrians, but pedestrian flow mixed with S-pedestrians as majority and C-pedestrians and R-pedestrians as minority