  Designing efficient traffic lanes for pedestrians is a critical aspect of
urban planning as walking remains the most common form of mobility among the
increasingly diverse methods of transportation. Herein, we investigate
pedestrian counter flows in a straight corridor, in which two groups of people
are walking in opposite directions. We demonstrate, using a molecular dynamics
approach applying the social force model, that a simple array of obstacles
improves flow rates by producing flow separations even in crowded situations.
We also report on a developed model describing the separation behavior that
regards an array of obstacles as a membrane and induces spontaneous separation
of pedestrians groups. When appropriately designed, those obstacles are fully
capable of controlling the filtering direction so that pedestrians tend to keep
moving to their left (or right) spontaneously. These results have the potential
to provide useful guidelines for industrial designs aimed at improving
ubiquitous human mobility.
