Field testing two innovative lighting interventions to influence waiting behaviours and movements on stairways in train stations

Abstract

Features of lighting that can influence people’s behaviours have been identified in an earlier study, along with six scenarios where these could be applied to solve problems with movements through railway stations. The current paper describes the development and testing of novel lighting interventions for three of these scenarios, with two new products controlled by the Internet of Things technology integrated with operational railway systems. The first uses projected light to indicate preferred platform waiting locations. The second uses chasing light-emitting diode lighting along a staircase to encourage bi-directional movements. The field study has been carried out in real-world operational railway settings. An evaluation has been based on a theory-based approach to consider whether the lighting functions as intended and whether people react in anticipated ways. The study found that the lighting interventions have been successfully implemented, and there are indications of favourable responses from passengers, though these have been small effects. The approach to evaluation also assists with diagnosis of weaknesses in the initial concepts and determination of the situational factors that can compete with the behaviour influencing effect of the lighting. This enables refinement and further product development. Practical challenges in implementing trials in this type of operational setting have been identified.

Ways to study changes in pedestrians’ behaviour in the artificially lit urban outdoor environment

“…Moreover, the observations of pedestrian walking behaviour revealed a more centric walking path along the sidewalk under LED illumination, particularly with the optimised LED luminaire. Changes in passengers' behaviour such as an increase of the use of the left-hand side for descending, and a shift from the centre to the opposite side of the staircase after introduction of the targeted lights (i.e., handrail lighting on the stairway) were reported in the study [42]. In addition, it was noticed that the average path for lighting application with CMH was systematically closer to the centre line compared to application with HPS, although the difference, in absolute terms, was quite small [45].…”

“…Additionally, it was found that a decrease in the colour temperature of ambient lighting from 6500K to 3200K reduces the comfort level of pedestrians, as well as that colour temperature had the strongest influence on the choice of a route by pedestrians, compared with dimming [40]. Lastly, the use of targeted lighting design and visual cues such as projected light or chasing light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, had a potential to influence people's movement and behaviour [41,42].…”

“…Besides walking in a broad sense, lighting conditions can also impact on more precise parameters of human mobility, namely walking speed [42][43][44][45][46][47][48], gait characteristics [46,47,49,[50][51][52][53]55] and use of the walkway space [42,45,54].…”

“…When comparing two different lighting conditions (high pressure sodium (HPS) and ceramic metal halide (CMH)), the authors of the study [45] reported that the mean speed was significantly slower under HPS lamps along the straight part of the path. Finally, the impact of targeted lighting design and visual cues on walking speed was also discussed [42,44,55]. It is worth noting that two studies [1,54] did not find any walking speed changes with the change in lighting conditions.…”

“…Outdoor lighting has also been found to affect the way people use a walkway space [42,45,54]. The authors of the study [54] observed pedestrian placement on pedestrian paths.…”