Effect of Height on Pedestrian Route Choice between Stairs and Escalator

Abstract

In order to overcome the subjectivity of existing pedestrian route choice models, an alternative choice model is presented based on the utility equation. It is composed of several indirectly objective characteristic variables, including the height, length, and width of interlayer facilities; speed of automated facilities; and carry-on luggage. Considering the scene that pedestrians choose between the stairs or escalators, an extended binary logit model is developed. Calibration and validation of the model are accomplished by using the data collected in four typical passenger transfer stations in Beijing, China. The results show that the proposed model has an average accuracy of 86.56% in bidirection for predicting pedestrians’ behavior. An interesting phenomenon can be found that the length of facility has poorer impact than height on pedestrians’ route choice behavior. Some quantitative and irradiative conclusions have been illustrated on the relationship between the selection probability and the variables, which is expected to be valuable for extracting the implicit theoretical mechanism of passenger choice behavior.