Start-Up Time of Crossing Pedestrians with Different Signal Configurations

Abstract

: Pedestrian start-up time is a very important factor when designing the pedestrian signal phase at a pedestrian crosswalk. Start-up time is divided into two categories as early start-up and delayed star-up time. If a pedestrian starts to move from the curb during the red light, it is termed as early start-up time whereas if the pedestrian starts moving from the curb after the green light, then it is termed as delayed start-up time. Pedestrian crossing time is the summation of the start-up time of the pedestrian and the time required to cross the road. By adding this start-up time into the pedestrian signal phase can reduce the interaction between pedestrians and vehicles, and excess delay at pedestrian crossings. From the initial study, it was observed that start-up time is greatly influenced by the signal configuration. Thus, this research has the intention of assessing the effect of different signal configurations into the pedestrians’ start-up time based on pedestrian characteristics, and thereby, find the best signal configurations with minimum start-up delay. Data was obtained from the video footages from three different pedestrian crossings; (1) Traditional red and green phase, (2) Countdown with waiting time phase, (3) Countdown without waiting time phase. One-way ANOVA statical test was used to evaluate whether there exists any significant deference between these signal configurations. Further, Post-Hoc (Tukey) test was conducted to evaluate which specific signal configuration differs significantly from each other. Finally, a multiple linear regression model was developed by considering start-up time as dependent variable and pedestrian characteristics and signal configurations as independent variables. The model was validated with a R value of 0.75 and pedestrian characteristics such as age, gender, having a bag, and the signal configurations are highly significant to the start-up time in the proposed regression model.