Multi-Stage Pedestrian Crossings and Two-Stage Bicycle Turns: Delay Estimation and Techniques for Limiting Pedestrian and Bicycle Delay

摘要

Signalised intersections sometimes involve multistage pedestrian crossings, in which signals direct pedestrians to cross to one or more islands and then wait there for a signal to continue. Unless carefully designed, delays to pedestrians can be very long, but there are no easily applied methods for calculating pedestrian delay at multistage crossings. Two-stage left turns for bicyclists are a special case of multistage crossings that are also considered. A numerical method for determining crossing delay is described that applies to crossings of any number of stages and multiple WALK intervals per cycle, diagonal two-stage crossings where pedestrians may have path choice, and bicycle two-stage turns. This method has been implemented in a freely available online tool. We also describe several signal timing techniques for improving pedestrian and bicyclist progression through multistage crossings including short cycles, reser-vice for selected crossing phases, lead-lag phasing with overlaps, and bidirectional bicycle crossings which create path options for two-stage turns. Examples show the potential for large reductions in pedestrian delay, often with little or no increase in vehicular delay.