Safety-oriented facility design and operation management for transportation hub station

Given the high efficiency and punctuality, transportation hub station are widely used by citizens, travelers daily. The large volume of passengers tends to cause overcrowding in transportation hub stations. Therefore, passenger movement efficiency has been a great concern for station designers, engineers, and facility managers. As the main facility connecting different floors in multilevel metro station, passengers' movement on the vertical pedestrian transit facilities including stairs and escalators are critical for passengers' safety and efficiency. To minimize passenger crowding and improve passenger movement efficiency, this study analysed the factors affecting passenger flow on vertical pedestrian transit facility and derived useful insights. By investigating the efficiency of passenger movement on the platform, influencing factors including the speed of escalator, passengers' willingness to choose the stairs to move up floor levels, the layout and length of the mills barrier were explored. Furthermore, a safety-oriented evacuation layout was also detailed in the study. The study of the mills barrier revealed that a mills barrier placed between a staircase and an escalator promoted passenger efficiency. Moreover, a mills barrier length of 1 or 1.5 m is recommended. For the guidance strategy on the metro platform, the effect of passengers' willingness to choose the stairs to move up on passenger efficiency was also investigated. Results indicated that passenger dwelling time decreased with an increasing proportion of passengers choosing the stairs. The suggested proportion of passengers choosing the stairs is 30%-40%, which effectively improve passenger efficiency. For the fire evacuation in transportation hub station, the removable facilities near the bottleneck point should be planned decently to be removed with the fastest speed, that will effectively speed up the evacuation process. The results are expected to be useful for designers, engineers, and facility managers.