Service bottlenecks in pedestrian dynamics

ABSTRACT The flow rate at service points - the amount of people who get served over time – is one central issue in pedestrian dynamics, as a lack of service capacity leads often to more impacting bottlenecks in the regarded environment than physical bottlenecks causing queuing situations and congestions. Examples where possible service bottlenecks might occur are vendor stands at public events, security checks at airports or selling points of tickets at railway stations. In this paper, service bottlenecks are examined from the view of traditional analytic queuing theory and computational simulation. As scholars regularly use both approaches separately, the comparison of the results and implications of both methods closes a gap in the recent research. In addition, essential feedback effects in queuing are introduced – namely the efficiency increase, the grouping and the postponement effect – that need consideration for the successful management of service systems.

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