Constant-net-time headway as a key mechanism behind pedestrian flow dynamics.

We show that keeping a constant lower limit on the net-time headway is the key mechanism behind the dynamics of pedestrian streams. There is a large variety in flow and speed as functions of density for empirical data of pedestrian streams obtained from studies in different countries. The net-time headway, however, stays approximately constant over all these different data sets. By using this fact, we demonstrate how the underlying dynamics of pedestrian crowds, naturally follows from local interactions. This means that there is no need to come up with an arbitrary fit function (with arbitrary fit parameters) as has traditionally been done. Further, by using not only the average density values but the variance as well, we show how the recently reported stop-and-go waves [Helbing, Phys. Rev. E 75, 046109 (2007)] emerge when local density variations take values exceeding a certain maximum global (average) density, which makes pedestrians stop.