They wear black clothes and bright green caps with a QR code attached: 1500 test subjects jostled each other in Düsseldorf some time ago in the service of science. In an event hall, they simulated the crowd and pushing on a platform for four days – in very different situations.
Scientists at Forschungszentrum Jülich and hundreds of fellow campaigners simulated, among other things, staying on a platform or getting on and off at the train doors. The research team followed the subjects ‘movements with cameras above their heads, and the researchers also had other data recorded, such as the subjects’ heartbeat or stress level.
The aim of the whole thing: The Jülich want to develop new concepts to increase safety, but it should also be about increasing comfort and efficiency in overcrowded train stations. The federal government is funding the experiments with 3.4 million euros. With 36 million passengers in local public transport nationwide per day – and the trend is rising – it is important to cushion peak loads and structurally adjust the platforms accordingly, says Armin Seyfried from the coordination team at the Institute for Civil Security Research in Jülich.
Level indicator for the trains
Where should benches, waste paper bins, timetables and car status indicators be located? Where do people prefer to wait? “There are people who would rather wait in the danger area near the edge of the platform than get too close to others. Others only feel comfortable with a wall behind their backs,” reported the team. Commuters would also essentially behave differently than long-distance travelers with luggage or football fans who are drunk. In other countries, for example, walls with passages separate the crowd from the tracks. According to the researchers in Germany, this is not possible because of the different train types. So-called pushers, i.e. employees who push people into trains like in Japan and keep latecomers away, are not included in the test design.
One solution, however, could be level indicators for the trains: if the passengers knew beforehand in which wagons the empty seats were waiting for them, the crowd on the platforms could be straightened out and their full length could be better used.
In the end, a total of eight doctoral theses should result from the experiments. Because of the corona pandemic, the pushing experiments had been postponed by one and a half years. Last but not least, measures to reduce particularly dense crowds could also reduce the risk of infection.