Evaluation of pedestrian flow characteristics across different facilities inside a railway station

Rail networks play major role in transporting people at any level of development of a country. Railway stations infrastructures are to be well designed and managed for platform changing and evacuation. A detailed study is to be made in understanding pedestrian flow characteristics on horizontal and vertical movement facilities. In this paper, passageway with and without centre rail, stairway and escalator are evaluated and compared within a railway station for a keen insight in variation of pedestrian traffic characteristics. Pedestrians speed on stairway is higher than on passageway. Walking speed of younger is greater than middle aged and elders have less speed. Pedestrians with luggage walk slower than pedestrians without luggage. Significant differences in speed exist with respect to attributes age, luggage, gender and direction. It is interesting to observe that the flow on passageway with and without centre rail is same. Pedestrians tend to move and merge with flow to the adjacent side of passageway connected at the neck of stairway.