Non-monotonic behavior of jam probability and stretched exponential distribution in pedestrian counterflow

Abstract

Abstract We adopt a floor field cellular automata model to study the statistical properties of bidirectional pedestrian flow moving in a straight corridor. We introduce a game-theoretic framework to deal with the conflict of multiple pedestrians trying to move to the same target location. By means of computer simulations, we show that the complementary cumulative distribution of the time interval between two consecutive pedestrians leaving the corridor can be fitted by a stretched exponential distribution, and surprisingly, the statistical properties of the two types of pedestrian flows are affected differently by the flow ratio, i.e., the ratio of the pedestrians walking toward different directions. We also find that the jam probability exhibits a non-monotonic behavior with the flow ratio, where the worst performance arises at an intermediate flow ratio of around 0.2. Our simulation results are consistent with some empirical observations, which suggest that the peculiar characteristics of the pedestrians may attributed to the anticipation mechanism of collision avoidance.