Optimal Guidance of Pedestrian-Vehicle Mixed Flows in Urban Evacuation Network

In metropolitan areas, a potentially large number of pedestrians depend either on transit or other modes for evacuation, or need to walk a distance to access their passenger cars. In the process of approaching some designated pick-up points for evacuation, the massive number of pedestrians may incur tremendous burden to the vehicles on the roadway network. Thus, an effective coordination between the vehicle and pedestrian flow during the multi-modal evacuation process shall be devised. This paper presents an integrated linear model for design of routing plans for massive mixed pedestrian-vehicle flows within the evacuation zone. The proposed model integrating the pedestrian and vehicle networks can effectively take into their potential conflicts during the evacuation, and generate the optimal routing strategies for guiding evacuees moving toward either the pick-up locations or their parking areas. An illustrating example concerning the evacuation around the M&T stadium area has been presented and seems to indicate promising properties to address the complex interactions between vehicle and pedestrian flows within the evacuation zone. Results of simulation experiments clearly indicate that the failure to account for the conflict movement will yield unrealistic plans that can’t be implemented during the actual evacuation process. Xin Zhang, Gang-Len Chang 3