Modeling Pedestrian Choice Behavior of Vertical Walking Facilities in Rail Transit Station Considering Reminder Sign

A pedestrian choice model of vertical walking facilities based on random forest is established in rail transit station considering four key influence factors: interlayer height, luggage, the difference in the number of pedestrians in front of elevator and stairway, and walking speed. This model is verified with the collected data of Changchun light-rail transfer station and Beijing Xi-zhi-men railway transfer station, China, and compared with the choice model based on support vector machine. Prediction results of these two choice models are all good and acceptable. The difference between the mean prediction accuracies of these two pedestrian choice models is small (0.62%). Incorporating the choice model of vertical walking facilities into a cellular automata (CA)-based pedestrian simulation model, and setting reminder sign in front of pedestrian choice zone to reduce conflicts, pedestrian choice behavior of vertical walking facilities in rail transit station is simulated. The simulation results indicate that efficiency of pedestrians passing is improved with the effect of reminder sign, and the distance between reminder sign and vertical walking facilities should be set to be larger than 4 m.