Behavior and Perception of Pedestrians Walking In Groups

The freedom with which a person can walk is a useful guide to the civilized quality of an urban area. Walking speed of pedestrians vary significantly when moving in groups and as an individual. Influence of various factors like type of pedestrian facility, and personal characteristics on pedestrian speed and behavior when moving in groups is studied by collecting data at 18 study locations in five Indian cities. Perception of various factors governing the design of a facility is observed by employing questionnaire survey among individual pedestrians and groups. Pedestrian groups walk significantly different from individual pedestrians. Children groups walk faster than the rest by an average of 13% and male groups walk significantly faster than female groups by 11%. Pedestrians in group of different sizes walk significantly different from each other with groups of size 2 walking faster than the rest. Pedestrian pairs in different age groups walk significantly different with younger adult pairs walking faster than the rest. Both individual pedestrians and groups rate safety as the most important factor governing the design of facility. User environment (33%) is perceived as the major aspect of safety by the pedestrian groups and it is observed that pedestrian groups feel 9% safer than the individual pedestrians during night time. Convenience of both individuals and pedestrian groups are highly affected by the congestion than the remaining factors. Key words: Pedestrian; speed; behavior; perception; safety.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Ilango, Thaniarasu
  • Rastogi, Rajat
  • Chandra, Satish
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2011-1-23 to 2011-1-27
• Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 90th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Behavior; Demographics; Gender; Groups; Pedestrian areas; Pedestrian flow; Pedestrian traffic; Pedestrians; Speed; Walking
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01337213
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 11-3094
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Apr 19 2011 7:17AM