Citation

Helbing D, Jiang R, Treiber M. Phys. Rev. E Stat. Nonlin. Soft Matter Phys. 2005; 72(4 Pt 2): 046130.

Affiliation

Dresden University of Technology, Andreas-Schubert-Strasse 23, 01062 Dresden, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, American Physical Society, Publisher American Institute of Physics)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16383491

Abstract

In two intersecting many-particle streams, one can often find the emergence of oscillatory patterns. Here, we investigate the interaction of pedestrians with vehicles, when they try to cross a road. A numerical study of this coupled pedestrian-vehicle delay problem has been presented in a previous paper. Here, we focus on the analytical treatment of the problem, which requires us to use a simplified car-following model. Our analytical results for the transition to oscillatory pedestrian and traffic flows and the average waiting times are well supported by numerical evaluations and give a detailed picture of the collective dynamics emerging when pedestrians try to cross a road. The mathematical expressions allow one to identify the dependence on model parameters such as the vehicle or pedestrian arrival rate, and the safety factor of pedestrian gap acceptance. We also calculate a formula for the vehicle time gap distribution, which corresponds to the departure time contribution of a M/D/1 queue characterized by Poissonian distributed Markovian arrivals, 1 service channel, and deterministic departures.