Affiliations: [a] Department of Management Science and Information Management, School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
| [b] School of Traffic & Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author. Yi Xie, School of Traffic & Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, No. 960, Wanjiali South Road, Tianxin District, 410114, Changsha, China, Tel: +86 181 7122 1426. E-mail: xieyiwork1987@163.com.
Abstract: Stampede accidents with serious injuries occur from time to time on escalators. Field observation was conducted on four typical passenger behaviors during taking escalators, namely, walking behavior, subgroup behavior, overtaking behavior and waiting behavior. The effect of behavior characteristics on passenger safety was analyzed according to the observation data. Several scenarios were simulated to quantitatively study the impact of passenger behaviors on crowd stampede risk under different situations. The results show that: (1) the presence of subgroup behavior and overtaking behavior increases the crowd stampede risk by increasing the crowd density and the degree of congestion on the connection plane; (2) the walking behavior reduces the crowd density; (3) the “walk left, stand right” rule decreases the evacuation efficiency; (4) waiting behavior of passengers on the connection plane significantly increases the crowd stampede risk. Management measures were proposed to promote the passenger safety and reduce the stampede injury on escalators.
