The fundamental diagram of pedestrian movement revisited

The empirical relation between density and velocity of pedestrian movement has not been completely analysed, particularly with regard to the 'microscopic' causes which determine the relation at medium and high densities. The simplest system for the investigation of this dependence is the normal movement of pedestrians along a line (single-file movement). This paper presents experimental results for this system under laboratory conditions and discusses the following observations: the data show a linear relation between the velocity and the inverse of the density, which can be regarded as the required length for one pedestrian to move. Furthermore, we compare the results for the single-file movement with literature data for the movement in a plane. This comparison shows an unexpected conformance between the fundamental diagrams, indicating that lateral interference has negligible influence on the velocity–density relation in the density domain 1 m−2 > ρ > 5 m−2. In addition, we test a procedure for automatic recording of pedestrian flow characteristics. We present preliminary results on the measurement range and accuracy of this method.