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Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582

15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a Prerequisite for

Sustainable Development”

Underground railway safety analysis and planning strategy: a case

of Harbin metro line 1, China
Guo Ronga, Wang Sainan a, Huang Mengshi a,*
a
Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Abstract

With the development of rapid urbanization, the urban expansion and traffic jams are the serious problem of city development.
Underground railway plays an important role in urban public transport, which helps to ease traffic congestion. Because of the
frequent accidents of underground railway, the research of underground railway safety and the planning strategies lays the
foundation for the urban public safety research. This paper reveals the safety situation of Harbin Metro Line 1 in China from the
passenger safety consciousness, equipment and environment, and management factors, through a series of subjective
questionnaire surveys. However, the reliability and validity of the questionnaire survey are calculated by SPSS 22 software, and
used to assess the qualities of investigation results. With the results, the safety problems and the pertinence planning strategies
are put forward for Harbin Metro Line 1. The research has a reference value for underground railway planning and construction,
and plays a foundation for improving urban public safety.
© 2016
© 2016Published
The Authors. Published
by Elsevier by Elsevier
Ltd. This Ltd.
is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Urbanisation
Peer-review as aresponsibility
under Prerequisite of
forthe
Sustainable Development.
scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a
Prerequisite for Sustainable Development
Keywords: Underground railway safety, Planning Strategy, Questionnaire surveys, Harbin Metro Line 1, China.

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of urbanization, the problems of urban sprawl and worse ecological environment are
serious. The development of underground space is one of the key means to solve the problem of urban capacity

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-130-590-276-63

E-mail address: 245770551@qq.com

1877-7058 © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a
Prerequisite for Sustainable Development
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.11.753
576 Guo Rong et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582

expansion, and the effective mode to enhance urban functions, improve the urban environment, and save intensive
land use. Urban public traffic safety is an important content of ensuring the city security. And the underground
railway that it is efficient fast and alleviate traffic, as one part of urban public traffic, leads to frequency public
safety accident because of the characteristic of sealing ability and liquidity. Since 2009, there are more than 100
underground railway safety accidents domestic and overseas, including fire, shutdown, crowded stampede, terrorist
attacks[1]. The underground railway hidden danger, safety management and passanger safety awareness gradually
caught attentions.
According to the related literature, the research of urban railway safety focused on the safety accident analysis,
the safety influencing factors analysis, the safety risk assessment, and the safety management and warning. The
subway systems are vulnerable to any number of nature and man-made hazards. Besides these vulnerabilities,
subways may also be associated with a range of health and safety hazards that could affect both passengers and
transit workers, included physical, biological, chemical, electro-magnetic radiation, psychosocial, and the threat of
terrorism[2-4]. The safety influencing factors refer to natural, social, and political, economic, cultural and so on [5-
7], and the equipment operation and management is the important factor [8, 9]. There are lots of research on safety
risk assessment with the methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis, such as questionnaire method[10, 11],
Fault Tree Analysis[1, 4], Fuzzy Mathematics method[12-14], Gray Correlation method[15, 16], AHP[17], and
Neural network model. Among these methods, questionnaire method combined with other methods is the main
study method for the safety risk assessment. To perfect the underground safety management and warning system is
the important measures of urban public security improvements that is the common goal of related research. The
researches show that the main strategies are including strengthen the awareness of public safety, improving the
hardware and facilities construction, enhancing the underground railway safety maintenance [18, 19].
This paper aims to examine the underground railway safety of Harbin metro line 1 in China based on a series of
field experiments and questionnaire surveys, including the passenger safety consciousness, equipment and
environment, and management factors. And the current problems of underground railway safety of Harbin are
analysed , and the statgies are put forward for underground railway construction and management to improving
safety.

2. Methodology

2.1. The area and objective

The subjective survey mainly focused on the public and the underground railway staff. Questionnaires were
distributed to 18 stations of Harbin metro line 1, as shown in Fig. 1. The passangers were randomly selected, and it
was ensured that there were more than 20 valid questionnaires from each stations, and that the survey sample is
representative.

Fig. 1. The surveyed area (Harbin metro line 1).

 Guo Rong et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582 577

2.2. Questionnaire survey

The purpose of questionnaire design is to study the current problems and the factors of underground railway
safety. Based on results of related research on the underground railway safety[10, 15, 20], the questionnaire
includes:
x Basic information of the interviewee;
x Experience and safety awareness of interviewee;
x Space and facilities of underground railway;
x Management and services of staff.

3. Results

3.1. The reliability and validity analysis of Questionnaire survey

The questionnaires are analysed using SPSS 22 software and a reliability test was conducted using the Cronbach
α parameter on reletions mind-body growth rate, overall the safety awareness, the space and the management of the
underground railway. Through the 20 items data of questionnaire, the Cronbach α is 0.825 which is greater than 0.7,
and KMO is greater than 0.7 which significance is 0.000. The data shows that the reliability and validity of the
questionnaire can be accepted (Tab.1 ).

Table 1. The reliability andvalidity of questionnaires.

Index validation items Test Results
Reliability testCronbach α 0.855
Str. Cronbach α 0.969
Sig. .000
Validity test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin˄KMO˅ 0.705
Bartlett’s spherical verificationApproximate chi-square distribution107.505
Degree of freedom 20
Sig. .000

3.2. Overall situation of Harbin Metro Line 1

Harbin metro is the Chinese first alpine subway, and the urban underground rail traffic lines with the highest
latitude. It officially started construction from September in 2008, completed construction at the end of 2012, and
formally opened in September of 2013. The whole line across a total 18 station, 17.47km long.
During the survey, in total 360 questionnaires were distributed, with 345 as valid, including 131 males and 214
females. There were 307 publics and 38 staffes, a ratio proportional to that nationwide figures. The age 21~40
passenges accounted for 75% of all investigators,which is most of young. And they have quick reaction speed, the
strong ability of perception and observation to help them respond to the emergency.
The basic information of interviewee as shown in Fig. 2a, 2b and 2c. The frequency and the purpose of the
interviewees are shown in Fig .2d and 2e.
578 Guo Rong et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582

10~20 21~30 31~40 Male Female Student Institutions

41~50 51~60 over 60 Employee Freelance
Subway staff Others
a. the age b. the gender c. the profession

150

120

90

60

30

Everyday Sometimes 0
Occasionally Seldom Work School Errands Relaxation Visit Others
d. the frequency e. the purpose

Fig. 2. the basic information of the interviewee.

3.3. The factors analysis of subway safety

3.3.1. Passenger safety consciousness

83% of the passengers are concerned about the security situation in Harbin metro (Fig. 3a). According to the
statistics, 80% of the passengers have not experienced unsafe events in underground railway. And there are a half of
the experienced passengers encountered theft (Fig. 3b). When the fire, power outages, explosions, terrorist attacks
and other emergencies are occurred in the underground railway, some passengers do not know how to do and do not
calmly handle emergencies (Fig. 3c).

Equipment trouble Fight ෭㟼㿲ᵋ ෨ฟิ䖖

Very More Normal Explosion and Fire Theft ㍗ᙕᔰ䰘 ୙▱㐨ᛠ஄࣎
Not quite Never Others Others
a. The attention of safe condition b. The frequency of unsafe accident c. The attitude of emergency

Fig. 3. the attention of passenger safety consciousness.

 Guo Rong et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582 579

3.3.2. Environment and Equipment

Space.
The statistics data shows that the ticket entrance and the escalator are crowded (Fig.4 and Fig. 5a~c). This paper
selected 6 typical sites, including 3 types of hospitals, universities, and business sites. Though the investigate, there
are a lot of people flow on morning peak(7:00-9:00) and evening peak(17:00-19:00) (Tab. 2).

180
150
120
90
60
30
0
Entrance Ticket Platform Escalator Train None
entrance

Fig. 4. The location of crowded space.

a. Ticket entrance b. Platform c. Escalator

Fig. 5. the picture of the space.

Table 2. The people flow of morning peak and evening peak.

Station The 2nd Affiliated Heilongjiang Harbin Engineering

Xuefu Road HIT Musume
Time Hospital of HMU University University

Ticket Entrance 1/4 2/3 3A/3B 1/2 1/3 2 1/3 1/2 3A/3B 1/2 3

Morning
892 358 394 620 864 592 1572 1214 1411 634 202
peak(7:00-9:00)
Evening
1105 422 259 426 416 365 1006 936 1257 712 160
peak(17:00-19:00)

Safety signs
The safety signs in the underground railway included safety channel, safety warning and yellow safety line. Most
of passengers have good understanding of the yellow safety line, but they have no understanding of other safety
signs (Fig. 6). In addition, more than half of the passengers do not know the location of the passenger safety tips
(Fig. 7).
580 Guo Rong et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582

60 Safety channel
Safety warning
50 Yellow safety line
40
30
20
10
0
Very More Normal Not quite Never
a. the understanding of safety signs b. the location of safety signs

Fig. 6. The safety signs.

Very More Normal

Not quite Never
a. the understanding of safety tips b. the location of safety tips

Fig. 7. The safety tips.

Safety facilities.
The investigate data shows that the passengers know the location and usage of the common emercy facilities,
such as fire extinguishers and escape hammer. But for the emergency alarm device, the escalator stop device and the
emergency door knob, most passengers do not know where it is and how to use it (Fig. 8a) . And 51% passengers
can not use the escalator correctly and have no fixed standing habits (Fig. 8b), which will result in unsafe accidents
on the escalator. More than 80% of the passengers will notice the close bell and actively cooperate with the safety
check, which can ensure the safe operation of underground railway.

100
Usage Location
80
60
40
20
0
Escape Fire Train Escalator Emergency
hammer extiguisher emergency stop device alarm
door knobs device

a. the usage and location of emergency facility b. the current and future of safety propaganda

Fig. 8. the emergency facility.

3.3.3. Management

Safety propaganda
 Guo Rong et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 575 – 582 581

The main stage of the public security information are the internet and the TV news. And 60% of the passengers
hope to get the underground railway safety information through the safety manual and the electronic bulletion (Fig.
9a). But the electonic bulletions are the commercial advertising, and the propaganda shelfs are empty (Fig. 9b).

100
Current Future
80
60
40
20
0
Posters and Interenet TV and Bulletin Others
safety and forum media and
manual division

a. the current and future of safety propaganda b. the location and current of safety propaganda

Fig. 9. the safety propaganda.

Safety management.
With the statistical data, the factors of improving safety risks are the public awareness of safety, the securtiy
facilities and the management efficiency. Most of passengers think that the staff need to improve the safety guiding,
inculding “call for getting down before up”, “safety guidelines entrance direction”, “point passenger misconduct”,
and “take care of things”. In addition, the underground railway construction and management need be strengthened
and improved, including emergency equipment demonstrations, emergency first aid measures, emergency accident
exercises, safety signs strengthening, and safety personnel patrol.

4. Conclusion and Discussion

This paper analyzes the safety situation of Harbin Metro Line 1 in China from the passenger safety
consciousness, equipment and environment, and management factors based on the combined approachs of the
questionnaire surveys, the field research and the statistical analysis. The results reveals that, (1) the citizens have
“short board” on underground railway safety knowledge, and they can not calmly deal with unexpected accidents;
(2) the safety facilities are complete in the Harbin Metro Line 1, but most passengers do not know the location and
the usage of these facilities; (3) the source of safety information is simple, and there is less progaganda and the lack
of emergency accident exercises. In summary, Harbin underground railway safety issues focuses on public safety
awareness and safety management. Therefore, there are 2 aspects to improve the underground railway safety
situation, inculding impoving the public safety awareness and strengthening the subway security management.
First, for the passengers, the core strategies are strengthening the public safety travelling education and
improving the emergency response capabilities for dealing with emergencies. The passengers should be actively
involved in safety lectures organized by the corporation, and learn how to properly use emergency facilities and how
to escape and self-help during the emergency accidents. Second, the staffs should emphasis on the education of
legal, technidcal and safety management. The sense of responsibility of staff should be enhanced for safety
management, and “safety first”operating guidelines should be remembered. And the safety manual and the
electronic bulletion should be fully utilized for propagandaing the fire safety and first aid measures. What’s more,
comprehensive coordination mechanisms of the underground railway safety can be effectively established for
ensuring the safet operation of underground railway and preventing the occurrence of accidents.
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