{"id":502,"date":"2008-07-03T00:32:51","date_gmt":"2008-07-03T05:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=502"},"modified":"2008-07-03T00:33:15","modified_gmt":"2008-07-03T05:33:15","slug":"how-many-pedestrians-can-bsqueeze-through-a-corridor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=502","title":{"rendered":"How many pedestrians can squeeze through a corridor?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/walking.jpg\" title=\"Walking\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/walking.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Walking\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s chaos in the corridors at the labs of Michael Schreckenberg and colleagues at the University Duisberg-Essen in Germany. Schreckenberg specialises in the physics of traffic and transport and has been fascinated by a particular question: how much pedestrian traffic can you squeeze into a shopping mall during the peak shopping hours?<\/p>\n<p>This question has been investigated for people walking in one direction but in reality, most public spaces involve people walking in both directions at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>To mimic these conditions , he sent 67 volunteers careering down a corridor at his labs in both directions and measured the flow.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that regardless of the speed or asymmetries in the flow, the total amount of traffic&#8211;the sum of the flow and counterflow&#8211;is always higher than in the flow in a single direction.<\/p>\n<p>Schreckenberg says that could be important for designing evacuation procedures in an emergency situation, particularly in confined spaces such as ships and shopping malls.<\/p>\n<p>However, I&#8217;d be interested to know the age distribution of Schreckenberg&#8217;s volunteers&#8211;he says that most of them are in their twenties.<\/p>\n<p>That may make his results applicable in only certain situaitons such as on board naval ships where almost everyone will be young.<\/p>\n<p>But obviously not for shopping malls where one 83-year old with a zimmer frame could wreak havoc.<\/p>\n<p>Ref: <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/cond-mat\/0609691\">arxiv.org\/abs\/cond-mat\/0609691<\/a>: Experimental study of pedestrian counterflow in a corridor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s chaos in the corridors at the labs of Michael Schreckenberg and colleagues at the University Duisberg-Essen in Germany. Schreckenberg specialises in the physics of traffic and transport and has been fascinated by a particular question: how much pedestrian traffic can you squeeze into a shopping mall during the peak shopping hours? This question has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hellraisin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}