Enhancing Role of Guiding Signs Setting in Metro Stations with Incorporation of Microscopic Behavior of Pedestrians

Abstract

In the metro operation environment, guiding signs provide direction and route conversion instructions to pedestrians. In metro stations with massive passenger flow, the rationality of sign setting would exert distinct effects on the efficiency of passenger flow. Currently, most studies on guiding signs focus on architecture, aesthetics and simulation. However, perspectives from humanization of pedestrian guidance signs such as pedestrian behavior needs and pedestrian cognition were seldom proposed. In this paper, the microscopic behavior characteristics data of pedestrians at different positions in typical metro stations were collected through pedestrian tracking experiments. After analyzing the characteristics of pedestrians’ microscopic behavior in metro stations, otherness of walking speed was found out among pedestrians in different types of passageways. The walking speed of pedestrians in closed-type passageways is higher than other types. Moreover, pedestrian speed at the stairs adjacent to the platform is higher than that at the stairs not adjacent to the platform. With the increase of crowd density, the change of walking speed of pedestrians can be represented by a unimodal curve. Finally, the key points of optimal setting of guiding signs in different regions and different periods were obtained according to the result analysis of the experiment. The research results of this paper can provide theoretical support and technical guidance for the optimal establishment of pedestrian guiding signs in metro stations with massive passenger flow.