The Effect of Pedestrian Crossings on Traffic Flow

In urban areas and especially in inner cities, pedestrians crossing the road considerably influence the road traffic flow. For political (environmental) reasons, priority could be given to pedestrians. This paper studies to which extent crossing pedestrians influence the road traffic capacity. Several distances between pedestrian crossings are considered, and moreover, a non-constant intercrosswalk spacing is considered. The focus is on the distance between pedestrian crosswalks. Both effects are quantified. The results in this paper can be used to optimize the effects of giving priority to pedestrians in specific situations and help decision makers determine whether the consequences are acceptable. Speed of traffic under a broad array of pedestrian crossing scenarios is given. An interpolation recipe is given to provide the speeds for situations which are not calculated. It is found in general that in all scenarios closely spaced pedestrian crossings improve the traffic situation for both pedestrians and car traffic. Besides, it is found that regular spacings are better for traffic flow than irregular spacings.