Study on pedestrian and cyclist interactions at signalised pedestrian crossings

• Main Author: Liu, Jianye.
• Other Authors: Wong Yiik Diew
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53374
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Singapore has a highly dense population of 7254 per square kilometre (Department of Statistics, 2011) and as well as a complex web of transport network. It is inevitable for a person living on the island state to make use of various modes of transport while going about with everyday tasks. For example, a person has to walk from home to the nearest bus stop to commute on a bus to the nearest Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station to commute on a train in order to report to work. With millions of commuters on the various forms of transport, there would be periods of time whereby the networks would be congested and leading to safety issues. Furthermore, it is difficult for the authorities to make a judgment if for certain areas there would be a volume of commuters that the current level of infrastructure service is unable to provide for. This project focuses on the interactions of pedestrians and cyclists at signalised junctions with a view to make recommendations to improve the safety of the pedestrians and cyclists who make use of the transport network. Signalised junctions are critical locations in which two or more roads intersect with each other with time separation for motorised vehicles and pedestrians to cross the junction. It is an area where interactions among different road users with different speeds typically occur. As such, the safety of the pedestrians and cyclists at such locations are important in improving the safety of the general transport network. At signalised junctions, pedestrians travel at different speeds according to factors such as age, amount of things being carried, gender and the purpose of the road users when crossing the junction. Hence, with the varying factors affecting the varying pedestrians using the junction, there would be bound to be impedance caused by slower pedestrians to the faster moving pedestrians. In this way, the intended comfortable walking pace for the pedestrians would not be achieved, hence reducing the level-of-service of the crossing.Another concern that remains prevalent in the current society is the violators. Violators are pedestrians crossing the junction when the signal prohibits them from crossing. These include crossing when the “red man” signal is shown and crossing when “green man” signal is flashing. The tendency of violating the traffic lights is dependent on various factors such as waiting time, volume of the road users, width of the crossing, gender and age (Hamed, 2000). Possible modelling could be established on the propensity of jaywalking at pedestrian crossing. In recent years, cyclists have increased in a greater number and the interactions among cyclists and pedestrians have to be considered as an important parameter in modelling the level-of-service. The safety issues and the interactions of cyclists and pedestrians are covered in the project. These parameters are also important for simulation and modelling so as to provide a platform for transport engineers to effectively plan for the improvements of the transport systems. This area of study has been extensively researched in other Asian countries such as Japan (Alhajaseen & Nakamura, 2010) and Hong Kong (Lee & Lam, 2005). These studies however do not factor cyclists into their studies. Thus, the aim of this project would be to include the cyclists into the consideration of the design of the signalised crossing; and as well as to study the interaction of the cyclists and pedestrians at such signalised crossings.