{"id":967,"date":"2007-05-10T18:39:02","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T17:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/2007\/05\/10\/on-the-fast-lane\/"},"modified":"2007-05-12T17:12:35","modified_gmt":"2007-05-12T16:12:35","slug":"on-the-fast-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2007\/05\/on-the-fast-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"On the fast lane"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to C.S.J. for telling me about the studies of Robert Levine<\/a> and others.<\/p>\n

\nThe pace of life in cities around the world is literally getting faster, a study shows.
\nPsychologists have measured the speed at which people walk and discovered a 10 per cent increase in the past decade. The findings, from 32 countries, reflect the increasing numbers of people living in the fast lane.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The page above has the data from a new study of Richard Wiseman<\/a> that will be published in his new book Quirkology<\/a><\/em>. Teams timed 35 men and women walking along a 20-metre stretch of pavement. Average times in seconds were as follows:<\/p>\n

Singapore 10.55; Copenhagen 10.82; Madrid 10.89; Guangzhou 10.94; Dublin 11.03; New York 12.00; Warsaw 12.07; London 12.17; Wellington 12.62; Paris 12.65; Tokyo 12.83; Harare 13.92; Cairo 14.18; Dubai 14.64; Bern 17.37; Blantyre 31.60\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Munich is missing – need for another study! I went to a lecture yesterday at Technical University, good conditions for a small trial: cat walk at München Kauffingerstrasse, no rain or snow, no babies or extremely small passengers, no wheelchairs, no jogger, no high-heels, no backpackers, no tourists, next tube entry is about 300 m away. You already get the point – situation is difficult to standardize. I even think that even time of day matters.<\/p>\n

I tried to follow passengers first with a mobile GPS but measurements were not very reliable; taking photos from ~20 m above ground in 10 s intervals for later analysis of mass movements would need a more orthograd view. So I decided to use also two chalk lines and measured the crossing of the lines manually<\/p>\n

p5120010.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are my results of 40 measurements<\/a>: mean time was 15,59 s (median 15,48 s, sd 2,02), pretty slow …. I even learned during this exercise that there is even software for simulation of mass movements click<\/a> – click<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

 <\/p>\n

\n CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 03.04.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to C.S.J. for telling me about the studies of Robert Levine and others. The pace of life in cities around the world is literally getting faster, a study shows. Psychologists have measured the speed at which people walk and discovered a 10 per cent increase in the past decade. The findings, from 32 countries, … Continue reading On the fast lane<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1057,1054,1053,1056,1055,1052,1051,1049,1050],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joke-fun","tag-analysis_software","tag-cat_walk","tag-chalk_lines","tag-getting_faster","tag-mass_movements","tag-metre_stretch","tag-mobile_gps","tag-richard_wiseman","tag-robert_levine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}