Audible pedestrian signals as directional beacons

Abstract

While many accessible pedestrian signals (APS) are installed to specify the time period when the visual WALK sign is activated, this series of studies explored the possibility of using APS to provide directional beaconing for pedestrians crossing a street. It was found that providing an APS auditory signal only from the far end of a 16 m crossing reduced the amount of veering more than providing the signal from both ends of the crossing. Alternating the signal between the two ends of the crossing for the 7 s of the WALK phase provided good beaconing information as long as only one of two parallel crosswalks at an intersection were signaled at a time. The most effective beaconing situation was to include a pushbutton locator tone at the far end that would activate when the WALK phase signal was complete.