01623072

Component

In the past decade, transportation planners worldwide have been incorporating shared space design elements as a way of creating pedestrian-friendly places. Streets incorporating shared-space principles tend to have reduced vehicle speeds and increased safety for vulnerable road users.In North American cities, a shared-space approach is rarely applied to non-motorized environments such as pedestrian malls, campuses,and parks. As cyclist and pedestrian speed distributions overlap, there is an opportunity to provide safe and convenient infrastructure to both through non-motorized shared spaces. Yet, little empirical evidence exists concerning the risk of pedestrians and cyclists interactions in shared spaces.To evaluate the safety of these spaces, a methodology is developed for semi-automated pedestrian-cyclist conflict analysis at high-volume intersections in non-motorized shared space.Measures of pedestrian and cyclist speed, angle of approach, pedestrian density and time-to-collision are analyzed to estimate the risk of pedestrian-cyclist interactions for different conditions. The methodology is then applied to a case study on the McGill University campus in Montreal,Canada, where pedestrians and cyclists co-exist with limited presence of motorized vehicles.Pedestrian and cyclist user trajectories were automatically extracted using a computer vision software to yield 2739 pedestrian-cyclist interactions for analysis. Speed and pedestrian density are shown to be negatively correlated, while conflict rate and density are positively correlated. Although a high pedestrian density increases the likelihood of conflict, it also reduces cyclist speed.Statistical differences were shown between conflict types defined based on intersecting angle and road user configuration.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Standing Committee on Bicycle Transportation.

01618707

17-01960

English

18p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; Photos; References

Bicycle crashes; Case studies; Computer vision; Intersections; Methodology; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Risk; Traffic conflicts; Traffic density; Traffic safety

McGill University, Montreal

Conflict analysis

Montreal (Canada)

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-01960

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:41AM