Traffic flow in a crowd of pedestrians walking at different speeds

Abstract

This study investigates motion in a crowd of pedestrians walking at different speeds. Three pedestrian groups are considered (slow walkers, normal walkers, and fast walkers), and we design the experimental condition by mixing the normal walkers with either the slow or the fast walkers to create flows with different speed compositions. All the walkers in this experiment were instructed to walk along a circular course unidirectionally. Fundamental diagrams and multiple regression analysis show that the speed at which a particular pedestrian walks is determined by both the local density and the speed at which the surrounding pedestrians are walking. We also find that the spontaneous lane formation, that occurs in bidirectional flow, does not occur in flow in which the speed is heterogeneous, thereby resulting in a spatial density distribution with large variance. This corresponds to pedestrian clustering, which reduces both the mean speed and the flow rate.