Discussion on Design of Egress in Underground Inter-city Railway (UIR) Station in China

In China, the land availability for urban development is reducing progressively. The trend of construction of inter-city railway stations is moving towards underground structures in order to save space. This paper has posed a discussion on means of egress in an underground railway station. Due to the lack of specific guidance on design of underground inter-city railway (UIR) station, current design in China mainly refers to the Code for design of metro (GB50157-2003). The design Code provides an approach for calculation of the platform evacuation time in case of an emergency; especially it requires a safe egress from the most remote point on the platform in 6 minutes or even less. As the differences between metro station and UIR station, including the type of trains, passenger flow, waiting mode, etc., this paper also discusses the validity of the approaches for calculating the egress time provided by Metro Design Code.In the meantimerecommendations are given on equation for calculating the platform evacuation time when considering design of egress in an UIR station. A feasibility analysis on this engineering approach has been carried out in accordance of an under construction project, the UIR stations on an intercity express rail link in Hunan province together with STEPS evacuation model.