Sidle effect on pedestrian counter flow

We study the behavior of walkers sidling through the crowd in the counter flow of pedestrian. When a walker enters the crowd, he turns himself sidelong to avoid a collision and edge through the crowd. The biased random walk model is extended to take into account the sidle effect. We present three models. The first model is for the pedestrians, which walk normally face to face. In the second model, pedestrian walks only sideways. In the third model, a walker turns himself sidelong if he enters the crowd, edges through the crowd, and returns normal walk if congestion disappears. It is shown that the walking sideways is faster than the normal walk, reduces the congestion, and the jamming transition point becomes lower than that of the normal walk. The jam cluster oscillates highly around the channel center near the jamming transition point in the third model. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.