Dynamic characteristics of the sideways movement of pedestrians: An experimental study based on single-file experiments

In this paper, we investigate the dynamic characteristics of the sideways movements of pedestrians toward the left-hand side and right-hand side through a set of single-file experiments. We find that the velocities of pedestrians during sideways movement periodically fluctuate, and the corresponding spatiotemporal diagram of pedestrian movement exhibits a jagged pattern. In addition, by analyzing the fundamental diagrams, we find that the velocity and flow of the sideways movement toward the right-hand side are greater than the velocity and flow of the sideways movement toward the left-hand side at the same crowd density. By further exploring step frequency/step length-headway relations in rightward and leftward sideways movements, we find that the greater velocity observed in rightward sideways movement is primarily attributed to its higher step frequency. Finally, we systematically compare the dynamic characteristics of pedestrians when they move forward, backward, and sideways toward the left-hand side or right-hand side. Our comparison results indicate that among these four movement modes, the free speed and maximal flow rate of pedestrians in the sideways movement toward the left-hand side are the lowest. These findings provide new insights into pedestrian flow dynamics.