A group of the University of Tokyo, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Telecommunications University and others has developed a new mechanism that the subjective feeling of congestion of pedestrians is caused by the gap between "ideal walking speed" and "actual walking speed". Revealed.
In pedestrian research aimed at ensuring safety and a comfortable walking environment, "density" has been mainly adopted as a physical index of congestion.However, there is no experimental verification that the density index actually matches the subjective feeling of congestion of pedestrians, and no comparison with other physical indexes such as speed has been made.
Therefore, in a pedestrian group experiment, the researchers measured "peripheral density" and "walking speed" as physical indicators, and at the same time investigated "subjective congestion" as a psychological index by questionnaire. I verified the relationship.
As a result, it was clarified that the speed was superior to the density in estimating the subjective feeling of congestion of pedestrians.From the experiment, the relationship that "the higher the density, the greater the feeling of congestion" was obtained, but the relationship that "the lower the walking speed, the greater the feeling of congestion" was observed more clearly. It is supposed to be.
Furthermore, even when walking at the same speed, people with high walking speeds (generally men and young people) tended to feel more crowded than people with slow walking speeds (generally women and elderly people).In other words, it was suggested that there is a gap between one's ideal walking speed and the actual walking speed, and pedestrians may feel so crowded that they cannot walk at the usual speed.
The results of this research will be useful for measuring and predicting congestion more accurately than the conventional theory of estimating congestion by density, and are expected to contribute to the design of comfortable cities and transportation facilities and crowd management.
