Multiple Escalators

All topics related to questions in Pedestrian Dynamics
Post Reply
Gothicawakening
Posts: 8
Joined: Friday 12 January, 2018 - 10:19

Multiple Escalators

Post by Gothicawakening »

I'm having major problems trying to model the crowd exiting from a new arena we are building.

I have multiple escalators in several banks, in most location there are 2 right beside each other.

No matter what I do, I always have the same problem (A and B right beside each other):

An agent gets near the top of escalator A but wants to go to B, then tries to fight through the crowd, blocking other people from getting on A until he gets out the way. Often the escalators have no people going down them for short periods as the agents at the top try and fight to get to the one they want, instead of the one right where they are standing.

Tried adding a Flow Splitter, and it made things even worse.

Now an agent gets sent right the the very top of the escalator by the flow splinter, but some will literally touch the first step, turn around and push through he crowd to the other one. I even added a barrier to separate the 2 more, the many rogue agents are now touching the top of the escalator, then walking many meters in a round about way to get to the other one.

Why wont they go down the one they are standing at the top of? I thought it was related to the escalator being full of people, but in some runs even the very fist agent to reach it does the same!

I made a quick video to show what's going on, sorry for the Cell phone recording, our corporate internet is heavily locked down and I have no way to upload screen capture videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2GdI5q8l_8

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Gothicawakening
Posts: 8
Joined: Friday 12 January, 2018 - 10:19

Re: Multiple Escalators

Post by Gothicawakening »

For some reason can't find how to edit my post.. so made another one!

One more video showing the issue more clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZrTYnKzvHY
marlies
Posts: 301
Joined: Monday 17 January, 2011 - 09:28

Re: Multiple Escalators

Post by marlies »

Hi,

Using a flow splitter is usually a good way of solving this issue. Based on your video I have the following suggestions:

- Place the destination lines of the flow splitter a bit more further down/up the escalators. In that way the agents won't be able to turn back once they reach the destination lines. Just make sure not to place them past the red dotted transfer line (if these escalators are connecting two different height layers).
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (47.41 KiB) Viewed 16837 times
- If that might give you error messages/problems please check if some agents can maybe reach there destination via just one of the escalators.

Regards, Marlies
Gothicawakening
Posts: 8
Joined: Friday 12 January, 2018 - 10:19

Re: Multiple Escalators

Post by Gothicawakening »

Thanks for your quick reply.

I did try and either got a bunch of errors about agents not being able to reach their destination or (when I moved the destination line again) none of the agents use the 2nd one at all!

The Ground Floor is just one giant square walkable area with a full-length exit on one side, so the exit is reachable from any escalator in the model.

I was able to remove some stuff and get the mode off our network and attached it for reference.
marlies
Posts: 301
Joined: Monday 17 January, 2011 - 09:28

Re: Multiple Escalators

Post by marlies »

Hi,

Thank you for adding the model, that helps a lot.

Please see atthached for the solution:

- The flow splitter didn't do anything because the option "Use Trigger Area" was selected, with the trigger are being on the wrong side of the line. I suggest to not use that option and just set the line split to divide the agents.
- I also placed the destination lines a bit on the escalators which now works fine.

Tip: you can see if the flow splitters do what you want by selecting an agent before it hits the line (the blue line that get's visible shows the planned path of the agent) and then check if anything changes in the blue line when they step over the flow splitter.

Regards, Marlies
Attachments
20180115 ExampleStands.mod
(347.95 KiB) Downloaded 445 times
Gothicawakening
Posts: 8
Joined: Friday 12 January, 2018 - 10:19

Re: Multiple Escalators

Post by Gothicawakening »

Thanks, that's very helpful. Got it working now!
Post Reply