The Development of Pedestrian Gap Acceptance and Midblock Pedestrian Road Crossing Behavior Utilizing SUMO

Abstract

While there are several published studies for modelling pedestrian behavior at signalized crossings in SUMO, the behavior of pedestrians crossing a road at a location other than a designated crossing, has not been considered to date. This work looks at how to represent pedestrian agents selecting to cross a road at arbitrary locations along the length of the road. The pedestrian agents utilize a gap acceptance model that represents how a pedestrian decides when to cross a road, based on the frequency and speed of approaching vehicles, while considering the spacing between them. Furthermore, the gap acceptance model allows the pedestrians to choose to cross all lanes in one go, when safe to do so, known as Double Gap or one stage crossing. Alternatively, if an agent is identified as a risk-taker, they may choose to cross lane by lane, sometimes waiting in the middle of the road, known as Rolling Gap or risk-taker crossing behavior. The inclusion of these two crossing behaviors allows for situations where urgency plays an important role in behavioral decision making, such as in emergencies, rush hour or in crowd management events. The outlined pedestrian crossing model is attained by integrating the pedestrian model EXODUS with SUMO, via the TraCI API.