Evaluation of the Unsignalized Two-stage Crossing on Basic Road Sections

Abstract

In Japan's unsignalized crosswalks on basic road sections, it is hard to say that safety and efficiency of crossing pedestrians are sufficiently ensured. On the other hand, in recent years, attention has been paid to a "two-stage crossing", that is a method in which a crosswalk is split into two stages by using a median island. However, as application examples are still limited in Japan, it is necessary to quantitatively show its effect. In this study, stop-or-go decisions of pedestrians at crosswalks were analyzed considering the impacts of pedestrian crossing time as well as position and speed of approaching vehicles by using observed data. Based on that, the change of the critical gap at the time of applying the two-stage crossing was estimated by formulating a pedestrian gap acceptance model. In addition, the effect of improving efficiency was quantitatively evaluated, by calculating the average delay of crossing pedestrians using this critical gap.