Impacts of Pedestrians on Capacity and Delay of Major Street Through Traffic at Two-Way Stop-Controlled Intersections

Abstract

This paper aims to estimate the impacts of pedestrians on capacity and average control delay for the major street through traffic at two-way stop-controlled (TWSC) intersections. A procedure was proposed to estimate the expected delay for major street through vehicles based on the pedestrian arrival time and motorist yielding behavior. Field data were collected to calibrate the crucial parameters in the established models. The proposed models were then validated against field measured data. It was found that the calibrated models provided reasonable delay estimates. Based on the established models, sensitivity analyses were conducted to identify the effects of pedestrian arrival rate and motorist yield rate on the capacity of the major street through lanes at TWSC intersections. The results suggested that the capacity of the through movement would decrease with an increase in the pedestrian arrival rate. It was also found that, with the same pedestrian arrival rate, the capacity would decrease as the motorist yield rate became higher, and the magnitude of the capacity reduction would increase with an increase in the pedestrian arrival rate.