Evaluation of Escalator Foot over Bridges Located in a Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Foot over bridges are accompanied with escalators now in Dhaka city. Several projects have been implemented at present and various such projects will be in the pipeline of the implementation. Our study tries to identify the performance evaluation of existing escalator foot over bridge. We did our study in two phases. Firstly, we did the field survey on how many road users were using foot over bridge on particular sites. The sites are—escalator foot over bridge at Kakoli, Banani and another one is at Airport road just opposite side of the Airport in Dhaka. The other survey was performed through question form taking opinion from public. There are total 298 responses which had been collected through google form. The demographic feature and the attributes data were collected. There were total 13 attributes, which were ranked strongly disagree to strongly agree and converted into numerical scale 1 to 5. The dataset were modeled using feed forward neural network (FFNN), which a widely used class of neural network developed based on biological thinking. The dependent variable of the study was overall condition of the foot over bridge. The model has 58.5% accuracy in training and 60.4% accuracy in testing. The most important attribute obtain was congestion and hawker. The concern authority should take care on these two issues. Most respondents complain on congestion and hawker problems. Government should take necessary step to eradicate hawker from foot over bridge. More pedestrian foot over bridges are required so that demand become less than capacity. Hence, the foot over bridges may not become over crowded. The field survey shows that people are very interested to use escalator foot over bridge. However, considering budget constrain careful feasibility study need to done, before planning escalator foot over bridge in a locality. This study can be extended for other areas and localities and other sorts of pedestrian facility study.