Title: The impact of random mid-block pedestrian crossing on urban arterial operational characteristics in developing countries

Authors: Mohammad Shareef Ghanim; Sameer A. Abu-Eisheh

Addresses: Civil Engineering Department, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar ' Civil Engineering Department, An-Najah National University, P.O. Box 7, Nablus, Palestine

Abstract: Highway Capacity Manual, 2010 (HCM) has developed an integrated multimodal approach to evaluate the quality of service along urban streets. This approach emphasises four different transportation modes, automobile, pedestrian, transit and bicycle. Although HCM procedures are widely used for capacity and level of service analysis, there are several factors that are not comprehensively addressed, such as the effect of pedestrians' mid-block crossing. In this paper, a multimodal microscopic simulation approach is used to address the significance of random mid-block crossing on the operational characteristics of urban arterials in developing countries. The a major urban arterial corridor that experiences high pedestrians volume and vehicular traffic is studied. VISSIM microscopic simulation environment is calibrated based on traffic and speed studies, and three different pedestrians' crossing cases are evaluated. Simulation results have shown that the scenario when pedestrians are randomly crossing the study corridor is associated with lower operational traffic conditions.

Keywords: pedestrians; mid-block crossings; multimodal simulation; urban traffic networks; random pedestrian crossings; random crossings; urban arterial roads; developing countries; traffic flow; vehicle speed.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEME.2015.072550

International Journal of Engineering Management and Economics, 2015 Vol.5 No.3/4, pp.169 - 180

Received: 07 Jan 2014
Accepted: 09 Dec 2014

Published online: 19 Oct 2015 *

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