Analysis of pedestrians' behavior at pedestrian crossings

This paper presents a methodology for studying pedestrians' behavior at pedestrian crossings, To help understand the behavior of pedestrians, separate models were developed and estimated for divided and undivided streets. Estimated models include waiting time at the curbside and the number of crossing attempts needed by the pedestrian to make a successful crossing. From a broad range of road user and roadway factors, the strongest and most significant predictors which influenced the pedestrian's waiting time and the frequency of attempts to cross the streets were gender, age, number of children in household, crossing frequency, number of people in the group attempting to cross, access to private vehicle, destination, home location in relation to pedestrian crossing. and pedestrian past involvement in traffic accidents. In addition to these predictors, maximum likelihood estimates revealed that the pedestrian expected waiting time seems to profoundly influence the number of attempts needed to successfully cross the street (divided or undivided). Furthermore, results relating to pedestrian crossings on divided streets indicate that the pedestrian's expected waiting time when crossing from one side of the street to the central refuge island seem to increase the risk to end the waiting time when crossing from the refuge island to the other side of the street. Finally, results seem to suggest that pedestrians behave differently or have different waiting times as they cross from one side of the street to the refuge and from the refuge to the other side of the street. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.