01473448

Component

The increasing accidents happen at mid-block crossings (MBCs) have led traffic engineers to consider treatments to make crossings safer. One common method is to install signalized MBCs. Until now, there are four mature signal control systems at MBCs that currently used in the U.S., Great Britain and some other countries which are pedestrian actuated (PA), pedestrian light controlled (PELICAN), high intensity activated crosswalk (HAWK) and pedestrian user-friendly intelligent (PUFFIN). Efficiency evaluation of these methods also has been carried out, however, most of the previous studies based on the hypothesis that pedestrians proceed under green signal, but in reality it is very common to see pedestrians enter crossings during pedestrian clearance interval, which is supposed to weaken the effectiveness and safety at crossings. With a strictly calibrated VISSIM model and SSAM software, the research explores how signalization schemes, pedestrian clearance interval violation rates, traffic flow and geometries affect the efficiency and safety of all road users at MBCs, in order to provide traffic engineers some guidance to select proper methods. Based on a Pearson-correlation analysis and multiple linear regression model, it is found that pedestrian signal violation during clearance interval can slightly reduce pedestrian delay, but results in a rapid increase on pedestrian-vehicle conflicts, especially for HAWK. The final results show that PA leads to high delay of both pedestrians and vehicles but less conflicts, PELICAN is beneficial for vehicular traffic by reducing vehicle delay but unbeneficial for pedestrian traffic since pedestrian delay is always high. HAWK and PUFFIN are better than the above two methods from balancing safety and efficiency for all road users. HAWK has a satisfactory performance at low pedestrian flow but it attributes to more conflicts when pedestrian flow increase up to “middle” and “many”, especially when pedestrian clearance interval violation rate is high. However, PUFFIN has a better performance than HAWK from both perspectives when pedestrian volume is “middle” and “many” .

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF10 Pedestrians.

01470560

13-3341

English

20p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Crosswalks; Midblock crossings; Pedestrian clearance interval (Traffic signals); Pedestrian movement; Signalization

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; I73: Traffic Control

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-3341

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:40PM