Evaluating Pedestrians’ Safety on Urban Intersections: A Visibility Analysis

Keila González-Gómez,María Castro

doi:10.3390/su11236630

Abstract

Overall visibility plays a key role in the safety of pedestrians. Despite its importance, verifying the right provisioning of sufficient available sight distances among pedestrians and vulnerable road users (VRUs) is not a prevalent practice. On top of that, the pursuit for more sustainable modes of transportation has promoted the establishment of different shared mobility services which are prone to increase walking and, thus, the number of pedestrians and other VRUs in urban settings. With the intention of verifying how car-centered designs perform for non-motorized users, a 3D procedure that evaluates the visibility of pedestrians and other users is presented and applied to specific cases in Madrid, Spain. The proposed solution employs virtual trajectories of pedestrians with mobility impairments and without them, cyclists, and personal transportation device riders. Their visibility was assessed around the functional area of urban intersections, including zones where possible jaywalking practices might occur. The evaluation was performed three-dimensionally, making use of LiDAR data, GIS tools, and 3D objects. Results show the impact of street furniture location on visibility, the distinctive influence of vegetation on the lines of sight of each observer, and how design parameters that were intended to improve motorized traffic could affect VRU.

Highlights

Walking, cycling, and riding are fundamental to the expansion of sustainable transportation, either used alone or in combination with other types of motorized transport [1]
Definition of of the the available availablesight sightdistance. With all these facts taken into consideration, the main purpose of this study is to introduce a procedure aimed at improving the safety of pedestrians and other vulnerable road users (VRUs) in urban settings
The following following section shows the main findings of the performed evaluationsapplying performed theexplained procedure, section shows the main findings of the evaluations theapplying procedure, in explained in the previous section, to two urban intersections, a

Summary

Introduction

Walking, cycling, and riding are fundamental to the expansion of sustainable transportation, either used alone or in combination with other types of motorized transport (public transit, private ownership, carsharing, ridesourcing, etc.) [1]. Different bikesharing, motosharing, and shareable electric scooter services have flooded many cities around the world, attracting new users, whether for fun or convenience, with different levels of riding or biking expertise. This trend has altered regular commuting and recreation routes, as well as created new ones [3]. These new users have to coexist with motorized traffic, and they all possess different decision and reaction times, capabilities, speeds, etc. To create safer environments for these dissimilar users, many road authorities have applied different road safety policies, such as speed reductions, traffic calming interventions, among others [4]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion