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Phys. Rev. E 65, 036120 (2002) [5 pages]

Capacity drop due to the traverse of pedestrians

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Rui Jiang, Qingsong Wu*, and Xiaobai Li
School of Engineering Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, People’s Republic of China

Received 13 October 2001; published 15 February 2002

In this paper, we have proposed a simplified model to describe the traffic flow when there are pedestrians traversing the road. The numerical simulation shows that the capacity of the road decreases in the presence of pedestrians. If the traffic flow rate is small, the traffic flow is basically unaffected even if some pedestrians traverse the road. However, if the flow rate exceeds a critical value, the vehicles cannot pass without delay, and a traffic jam appears. We also discuss simplified conditions of the model and accordingly present a modified model, which predicts qualitatively the same results except with a different capacity.

© 2002 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.65.036120
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.65.036120
PACS:
64.60.Ht, 02.60.Cb

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Email address: qswu@ustc.edu.cn