Report of a physical simulation done at the new pedestrian link at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital August 8 2013

1. Experiment report
August 8 2013
Last Wednesday, August the 7th, a physical experiment was done in the
new pedestrian link connecting pavilions K and D. The main objective of
this experience was to establish the standard walking time in a fixed
trajectory between the elevator ATP12 (K-12) and the entrance of pavilion
D, a total distance of 31 meters.
Once a standard time was calculated, we added more complex
configurations to the experiment trying to anticipate all possible situations
that may occur during phase 1, where the pedestrian flow in the link is
Pointed line representing the experiment path
anticipated to be up to 3,860 people per day including patients, clinical staff
and some logistical services such as dietary distribution, laundry, etc.
8 different scenarios were conceived (see table at the end). In order to
measure the flow time, we asked a group of 14 people to participate in the
experiment by walking in various configurations. Every configuration was
measured several times (at least 3 repetitions) and for each one six
timestamps were captured. The results are presented in the summary table
at the end.
Major findings: The experiments showed that there is evidence of a crowd
effect (an increase of walking time in presence of groups). There is a direct
relation between the crowd effect and the group size. We see evidence of this in experiments 3 and 4 where the total time
rose by 20% for the small group and 32% for the large group (3 and 14 pedestrians, no linear trend). We also found that is
possible to walk through the link in the presence of a logistical service delivery (or many). However, there is an impact on the
walking time (experiments 6 to 8). Pedestrians who come face to face with a logistical service transport tend to stop and find a
way to pass on the side of the cart (experiment 6). This represents an increase of 12% of the total time (experiment 6 vs. 5).
When the obstacle was very big, the increase went up to 33% (7 vs. 4).
Participants of the experiment
Experiments 7 and 8 showed that the size of the cart has a greater effect on the total time than the status of the cart (moving
or static) or the quantity of carts. This means that services like housekeeping and other distribution services using small and
medium carts should not significantly affect the pedestrian walking time compared to bigger carts used by laundry and CSR.
Above graph: Linear relation between the walking
time and the complexity of the experiment. The boxes
represent the variability of times
Right graph: Summary table of all the experiment
configurations and the average time found.
Prepared by:
Alvaro Gil agil@jgh.mcgill.ca
Philippe Bexton pbexton@jgh.mcgill.ca
Narcisse Kouakou kkouakou3@webmails.com