Impact of traffic sign on pedestrians' walking behavior

To study the impact of traffic sign on pedestrian walking behavior, the paper applies cellular automaton to simulate one-way pedestrian flow. The channel is defined as a rectangle with one open entrance and two exits of equal width. Traffic sign showing that exit is placed with some distance in the middle front of the two exits. In the simulation, walking environment is set with various input density, width of exit, width and length of the channel, and distance of the traffic sign to exit. Simulation results indicate that there exists a critical distance from the traffic sign to exit for a given channel layout. At the critical distance, pedestrian flow fluctuates. Below such critical distance, flow is getting larger with the increase of input density. However, the flow drops sharply when the input density is over a critical level. If the distance is a little bit further than the critical distance, the largest flow occurs and the flow can remain steady no matter what input density will be.