Estimating the Delay to the Mainstream Traffic due to Jaywalking Pedestrians on Urban Roads

Abstract

Growth of road users in urban areas results in consequential higher interactions between pedestrians and vehicles causing delay to the mainstream traffic flow. The delay caused by pedestrians who make random jaywalking along the carriageway is substantial when such behavior exists. Thus, the prime objective of this research was to study the interaction and develop a delay model to estimate the collective delay caused to the mainstream traffic which encounters jaywalking pedestrians. This delay is influenced by the characteristics of the crossing pedestrians and the behavior of on-coming vehicles. The data collection was done in a suburban city near Colombo, Sri Lanka. The data were extracted from video footages taken using a drone camera. Both the movement of the vehicles and crossing pedestrians on the subject lane were tracked using automated software in order to enhance the accuracy of the results. The delay caused to mainstream vehicle was derived using the deceleration and acceleration behavior. The proposed delay model exemplifies that the pedestrian-vehicle gap and the pedestrian speed along with other relevant pedestrian characteristics such as age, pedestrian speed at the start of the vehicle speed drop, and vehicle-related characteristics such as vehicle speed at the start and end, veh-ped gap at the vehicle speed drop, subject lane, and vehicle type are highly significant to the delay of the subject vehicle on the mainstream. The overall R value of 0.63 was observed from the regression analysis of the proposed delay model. The applicability of the proposed model for each pedestrian and vehicle characteristic has been determined and evaluated based on their level of significance.