Study on Pedestrian Crossing Behaviour at Unsignalized Intersections Using Gap Acceptance Theory

Abstract

Pedestrians are considered as weakest road users and one mistake of the pedestrian results into tragedy of the humans. This is due to rapid urbanization which results in the increase of road use by the pedestrians. So focus should be there on the pedestrians as what they will go through in the traffic and necessary to study pedestrian crossing behaviour. There is no proper study regarding gap acceptance theory with respect to pedestrians in Indian context. In order to study gap acceptance behaviour of pedestrian crossing there is need to study gap acceptance parameters such as critical gap and follow-up time in the context of Indian traffic such as heterogeneous traffic. Nine intersections were selected from the three mid-size cities namely from Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram by giving importance to the variation of traffic and pedestrian availability to study gap acceptance behaviour of pedestrians. Critical gap of the pedestrians was estimated from the video data collected by using the method equilibrium of probabilities and maximum likelihood method depending on different demographic factors like age and gender of the pedestrians. Comparison was made between the obtained critical gap values by using independent t-test and one way ANOVA test. These test results helps us to determine the method which is significant to use in heterogeneous traffic. Safety margins of the pedestrians were developed using the estimated parameters such as critical gap, crossing time, age and gender of the pedestrians. Obtained critical gap and follow-up time were used to calibrate the capacity at unsignalized intersections with respect to crossing pedestrians.