Member $99.00 | Non-Member $129.00
Sponsored by ASCE Continuing Education and the Transportation & Development Institute Street & Highway Operations Committee, Roadway Council.
INSTRUCTORS:
Edward J. Smaglik, Ph.D., P.E.
Sirisha Kothuri, Ph.D.
Purpose and Background
The goal of signal timing at an intersection should be to separate conflicting movements in time, maximizing safety and efficiency for all users. In many jurisdictions, however, signal timing objectives have traditionally focused on allowing vehicle progression and reducing vehicular delay and stops. While these are important considerations in many contexts, other users (such as pedestrians) deserve similar focus and control strategies. Recent updates to the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2010) have included specific multimodal delay modeling techniques offering a bit more accommodation to pedestrians, but still remain heavily vehicle-centric. While strategies such as an exclusive pedestrian phase and leading pedestrian intervals can help improve the safety of pedestrian operations, legacy service of pedestrians requires that they still must wait for their turn, which at times means they experience delays much in excess of those that would be deemed acceptable for a motor vehicle at the same location. Excessive delay can lead to pedestrian frustration, non-compliance and ultimately decreased safety. In the North American context, implementation of these strategies varies greatly across jurisdictions, and there has been limited research on incorporating these alternative pedestrian treatments at signalized intersections.
This webinar will present the details of alternative pedestrian strategies, as well as the results of recent research which sought to determine the impact on delay that these treatments have on all users, including leading pedestrian intervals, shorter cycle lengths, elimination of vehicle coordination during specific periods, as well as pedestrian priority service enabled by a traffic responsive algorithm. At the conclusion, practitioner recommendations will be presented developed from the results of a user survey, field implementations of strategies, and software-in-the-loop (SITL).
Primary DiscussionTopics
- Goals for signal timing
- Alternative pedestrian strategies
- Research results determining the impact on signal modification delay
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the details of various alternative pedestrian strategies design to increase pedestrian safety and / or efficiency
- Explain the impacts of these strategies on vehicle and pedestrian efficiency
- Implement one or more of the presented strategies in a state of the practice traffic controller
- Select an alternative pedestrian treatment based upon operational objectives
Webinar Benefits
- Understand the limitations of traditional traffic signal timing policy for pedestrians
- Discuss the different pedestrian control treatments being used in practice currently
- Learn about implementation of pedestrian treatments in traffic signal controllers
- Find out the user impacts of alternative pedestrian treatments at signalized intersections
- Understand the tradeoffs with each pedestrian treatment
- Determine which alternative pedestrian treatment to implement to address a specific operational issue
- Find out how to increase pedestrian compliance at signalized intersections
Intended Audience
- Traffic engineers
- Signal timing engineers
- Traffic operations specialists
- Bicycle and pedestrian coordinators and planners
- Community advocates
- Public officials
Webinar Outline
- Overview of current traffic signal timing practices and the issues with pedestrian accommodation at signalized intersections
- Existing signal control strategies for safety and efficiency
- Guidance for field implementation
- Results of a recent simulation comparison of these control strategies
- Gaps that exist with current signal control strategies for pedestrians
- Approach followed in developing a pedestrian priority algorithm
- Results of simulation of this algorithm
- Lessons learned from field deployments of the algorithm
- Practical guidance for deciding upon a pedestrian treatment based upon operational objectives