Designing mobile application messages to impact route choice: A survey and simulation study.

Crowd congestion is a common issue at train stations around major sports events, and puts passengers at risk and lowers service quality. Guiding arriving fans along less traveled routes may alleviate congestion. Smartphone apps provide a medium to deliver route suggestions but the messages they provide are pivotal to adherence. We explore how message design affects pedestrians' willingness to follow route instructions. We present an online survey conducted with two groups: football fans, and students and faculty associates. We vary the presence of top down views of the route choices at train station Münchner Freiheit in Munich, real-time information on congestion, and appeals to team spirit. We compute a distribution of route choices that suggests that congestion may be reduced with the right combination of message components for each target group. We then use a computer simulation to investigate the congestion situation. Our results suggest that lowest congestion is achieved when people base their decisions on real-time information. The social identity approach is highlighted in our study as having a possible influence on message design. Moreover, it indicates that the implementation of such apps in real-life applications can improve safety. Our methodology can be applied to other scenarios to test the suitability of apps and message designs.

Guiding crowds when facing limited compliance: Simulating strategies.

At traffic hubs, it is important to avoid congestion of pedestrian streams to ensure safety and a good level of service. This presents a challenge, since distributing crowds on different routes is much more difficult than opening valves to, for example, regulate fluid flow. Humans may or may not comply with re-directions suggested to them typically with the help of signage, loudspeakers, apps, or by staff. This remains true, even if they perceive and understand the suggestions. Yet, simulation studies so far have neglected the influence of compliance. In view of this, we complement a state-of-the-art model of crowd motion and crowd behavior, so that we can vary the compliance rate. We consider an abstracted scenario that is inspired by a metro station in the city of Munich, where traffic regulators wish to make some passengers abandon the obviously shortest route so that the flow evens out. We investigate the effect of compliance for two very simple guiding strategies. In the first strategy, we alternate routes. In the second strategy, we recommend the path with the lowest crowd density. We observe that, in both cases, it suffices to reroute a small fraction of the crowd to reduce travel times. But we also find that taking densities into account is much more efficient when facing low compliance rates.