Empirical Data for Pedestrian Flow Through Bottlenecks

Summary The number of models for pedestrian dynamics has grown in the past years, but the experimental data to discriminate between these models is still to a large extent uncertain and contradictory. To enhance the data base and to resolve some discrepancies discussed in the literature over one hundred years we studied the pedestrian flow through bottlenecks by an experiment performed under laboratory conditions. The time development of quantities like individual velocities, densities, individual time gaps in bottlenecks of different width and the jam density in front of the bottleneck is presented. The comparison of the results with experimental data of other authors supports a continuous increase of the capacity with the bottleneck width. The most interesting results of this data collection is that maximal flow values measured at bottlenecks can exceed the maxima of empirical fundamental diagrams significantly. Thus either our knowledge about empirical fundamental diagrams is incomplete or the common assumptions regarding the connection between the fundamental diagram and the flow through bottlenecks need a thorough revision.