How people with disabilities influence crowd dynamics of pedestrian movement through bottlenecks

Despite considerable research efforts, most controlled empirical studies on crowd movement usually rely on homogeneous crowds, i.e., research participants are typically young adults without disabilities. Consequently, relatively little is known about pedestrian movement in more diverse and heterogeneous crowd conditions, e.g., when persons with reduced mobility are present. This gap may be particularly relevant at bottlenecks, along the path of a moving crowd, that limit the capacity of pedestrian flow. Here, we present results from 12 studies in which participants (total N = 252) with and without visible disabilities moved together in a crowd. In each study, groups of participants walked together in a hallway with a bottleneck at the end. The point of speed adoption, distances between neighbours, and behavioural activities were analysed. We found (1) that participants with disabilities reduced their speed further away from the bottleneck than participants without disabilities; (2) participants without disabilities stayed closer to neighbors with disabilities than to neighbors without disabilities; and (3) participants interacted and communicated with each other to organise in front of the bottleneck. These results underline the importance of studying representative and heterogeneous samples in crowd dynamics. We also argue that more interdisciplinary research is needed to better understand the dynamics of interactions between neighbors in a crowd. A more nuanced understanding of pedestrian dynamics holds the promise of improving the validity of simulation tools such as movement and evacuation models.