Evacuation tests with elevated platforms in railway tunnels

With the purpose to increase the knowledge on human behaviour when evacuating along elevated platforms, an experiment was carried out at the subway station of Skarpnäck, Stockholm, in October 2016. The overall project objective was to develop basic data for guidelines regarding fire safety design concerning evacuation along elevated platforms.

The experiment was designed as a group experiment divided into five different scenarios. In total, 111 persons of mixed gender and age participated. The results from the experiment show that the flow rate along the elevated platform decreased as the walkway was getting narrower. It could also be seen that along the first half of the walkway, where a train was located on the rail track next to the elevated platform, the flow rate was higher and the width of the walkway was used to a lager extent compared to the second half of the walkway where the platform was open to the track area.

One of three wheelchair users who participated in the experiment expressed discomfort caused by the height and the width of the walkway and nearly half of the participants experienced problems with passing others walking slower than themselves.