Pedestrian Route Choice of Vertical Facilities in Subway Stations

Transit infrastructure is under pressure. As the trends toward greater urbanization and more sustainable mobility continue, that pressure is likely to increase. Finding ways to accommodate passengers more effi-ciently in existing transit facilities will become of ever greater importance, as will the tools and techniques to assess pedestrian movement. The suite of pedestrian analysis tools is reliant on first principles knowledge and research, where gaps exist. This paper describes research that has been completed to fill one such gap, namely rider choice at vertical circulation. First, field research was conducted on the Toronto Transit Commission subway system in Canada. Key explanatory variables were then tested for significance, including total height, density of flow, rate of opposing flow, and mobility of the individuals. On the basis of this analysis, a series of aggregate logistic regression models is proposed to explain pedestrian choice at colocated elements of vertical transport, specifically, stair-versus-escalator choice. Validation data indicate that the model generates values that provide a good fit with observed data.