Experiments for the Feasibility Study of the Evacuation by Moving Escalator in Public Space

This paper reports experiments on the reaction of pedestrians to the sudden stop and restarting of an escalator to explore the applicability of escalators moving toward safer side. Deceleration rate at the stop and acceleration at the restarting were controlled so that optimum operation to keep the safety of pedestrians were sought. 32 experiments were conducted on each of 10 subjects(6 females and 4 males) by changing the moving/still mode of the escalator, moving direction of escalator(upward/downward), deceleration and acceleration rates, walking/still standing modes of the subjects, and burden conditions. The experiments indicate restarting generally safer than stopping, downward operation generally safer than upward one, and significance of the influence of the burden condition to the safety of pedestrians at emergency stopping and restarting. The difference whether the pedestrian walks or stands still did not cause significant difference in the pedestrians’ safety. The experiments also indicate significant effectiveness of the reduction of the deceleration rate at emergency stopping from the current 0.61 m/s2 to 0.43 m/s2 and the acceleration rate at emergency restarting from the current 0.17 m/s2 to 0.10 m/s2 for the improvement of the pedestrians’ safety.