Role of number of traffic lanes on pedestrian gap acceptance and risk taking behaviour at uncontrolled crosswalk locations

Introduction: Pedestrian gap acceptance has been studied by many researchers for evaluating pedestrian facilities. However, these studies could not relate the gap acceptance at uncontrolled mid-block crosswalks have varied roadway features with pedestrian behaviour under mixed traffic conditions. In this context, the goal of the proposed study is to understand the probability of pedestrian gap acceptance while crossing uncontrolled mid-blocks and pedestrian risk taking behaviour considering the effect of pedestrian behaviour and different roadway characteristics. Method: Video surveys were conducted at selected uncontrolled crosswalk locations with varied roadway characteristics which includes number of lanes, median etc. in Mumbai city, India. The pedestrian individual and behavioural characteristics as well as roadway, traffic and vehicle characteristics were observed and noted from the processed videos. The binary logit models were developed with extracted data at each selected location by using NLOGIT 4 software package, considering pedestrian gap acceptance behaviour (accept or reject) as the response variable and set of remaining data as explanatory variables. Further, the generic model was developed with combined data by cross validation method. Results: The results show that the important explanatory variables affecting the pedestrian gap acceptance behaviour are vehicular gap size, frequency of attempt, pedestrian rolling behaviour and type of vehicle, which play a major role in pedestrian gap acceptance and risk taking behaviour while crossing the road. It is also identified that the pedestrian risk taking behaviour increases with increase in number of lanes by usage of pedestrian behavioural aspects. Conclusions: The study concluded that pedestrian behavioural characteristics needs to be controlled to reduce the pedestrian risky behaviour during road crossing at uncontrolled mid block crosswalks. Study findings concluded that the increase in number of traffic lanes increases the risk of pedestrian road crossing. The model results from the study may be useful for practitioner, planners and policymakers to formulate suitable traffic management guidelines to control pedestrian-vehicle conflicts at different uncontrolled mid-block crosswalks.