Investigation on the pedestrian crossing behavior triggered by an obstacle: an experimental study on single-file pedestrian flow

Abstract We carry out pedestrian dynamics research regarding the behavior of pedestrians crossing obstacles in single-file flow. We initially measured the density, speed, and fundamental diagram of pedestrians based on the center of their heads. Subsequently, we drew the time-space diagrams of pedestrian feet based on the center of their right feet and compared the results with those measured from the center of their heads. The comparison outcomes indicate that there are certain differences between the time-space diagrams measured from the feet and those from the heads of pedestrians. Among them, the speed changes measured from the feet are more intricate than those measured from the heads. Furthermore, the speed changes observed from the feet of pedestrians exhibit a high level of oscillation. This characteristic cannot be distinctly captured by the heads of pedestrians. Then, we investigated the crossing time of pedestrians and discovered that the height of obstacles and high pedestrian density would significantly increase the average crossing time, and the pedestrian crossing time would increase marginally with the increase of obstacle width. Finally, we investigated the variation of pedestrian speed in relation to distance and discovered that under low-density circumstances, the pedestrian speed assumes a ‘W’ shape during the crossing process, and the average speed after crossing is higher than that before. Nevertheless, in high-density conditions, the pedestrian speed only increases during the crossing process and remains at a low level in other positions. This is anticipated to provide some references for pedestrian flow modeling and channel design in real life.