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ABSTRACT
We experimentally investigated the flow of luggage-carrying pedestrians through a bottleneck in both normal and emergency situations. Based on trajectories, we analysed the temporal and spatial features of the flow and discussed pedestrian traffic efficiency. The main findings include: 1) When the ratio of luggage-carrying pedestrians increases from 0% to 100%, the steady-velocity decreases by 22% in the normal and 33% in an emergency, and the average flow decreases by 39% and 47%, respectively; 2) When no pedestrian carries luggage or when all pedestrians carry luggage, we observed a dual-peaks spatial distribution of pedestrians at the bottleneck, indicating that pedestrians prefer to exit from both sides of the bottleneck; 3) The power-law index of the complementary cumulative distribution function increases with the ratio of luggage-carrying pedestrians, and the specific bottleneck flow is lower than the previous studies, indicating that carrying luggage promotes congestion and reduces the passing efficiency.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the [National Natural Science Foundation of China] under Grant [number 12002291, 11602206, and 71871189]; [Sichuan Youth Science and Technology Innovation Research Team Project] under Grant [No. 20CXTD0081].
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The variabilities of the density and speed induce the large variability of the flow. Direct measurement of the flow crossing the bottleneck could reduce the variability. In future work, one can also adopt the alternative method.