Impact of Midblock Pedestrian Crossing on Speed Characteristics and Capacity of Urban Arterials

Abstract

Pedestrian crossing at midblock sections of urban roads at undesignated places is a normal phenomenon in developing countries. These locations are undesignated places, i.e., not marked with any zebra crossing, pedestrians’ signals or grade-separated facility. Still the Pedestrians cross the road to access their desired place in order to save time which negatively affects traffic movement. The present study attempted to quantify the reduction in capacity of 6-lane and 4-lane divided urban arterial roads due to such crossing maneuver by pedestrians. Capacity of base section, i.e., section does not have pedestrian cross-flow or any other factors influencing traffic flow, is determined from field data. These capacity values are compared with the capacity of section under the influence of pedestrian crossing. Data were collected on twenty-two different locations of 4-lane and 6-lane urban arterials in five different metropolitan cities. The speed–volume data are extracted from field data in order to find out the capacity of base sections and friction sections. The mathematical equation has been developed showing the relationship among pedestrian cross-flow and capacity drop. It has been found that there is no impact on capacity when pedestrian cross-flow is limited to 200 pph (pedestrians/hour). However, the capacity reduces by 32% when pedestrian cross-flow is raised to 1550 pph. Further, the safe pedestrian crossing facilities are recommended based on pedestrian and vehicular volume analysis.