Walking is being promoted as either a main mode of transportation or as a part of multimodal mobility. However, a rapid growth and development in urban areas has resulted in a drastic increase in human population as well as vehicular population in most of the metropolitans across the globe. Due to this, there is an unavoidable increase in conflicts between vehicular traffic and pedestrians often sharing the same road space. At an undesignated crossing, pedestrians wait for suitable inter-vehicular gap to cross the road. However, in order to reduce the waiting delay, pedestrians often take risk by accepting smaller gaps while crossing the road. It increases the probability of their collision with approaching vehicles. Apart from the frequency of crashes, the crash severity is also vastly governed by traffic flow characteristics. In this regard, it is a common belief that the reduction in speed of approaching vehicles can significantly bring down the severity of pedestrian crashes. On the other hand, vehicular movements also get obstructed due to the pedestrian activities carried out on the carriageway. During pedestrian crossing maneuvers, pedestrians often force the approaching vehicle(s) either to slow down or to change the lane which leads to reduction in the average speed of traffic stream. However, in case of pedestrians walking along the road, vehicles tend to shy away towards the center of carriageway to ensure the safe movements of pedestrians. Hence, pedestrians irrespective of crossing or walking along the road, eventually results in the reduction in speed as well as capacity of the road and sometimes prove to be a promising threat to safety of the road users. Therefore, in order to delve into the phenomena of pedestrian-vehicle interaction, one should need to study the mutual influences of pedestrian and vehicular movements on each other. In this background, this paper puts forward a detailed literature review on the assessment of pedestrian-vehicle interaction on urban roads. Findings of the paper are specific and infer the behaviors of both pedestrians and vehicles while sharing the same road space.
Pedestrian movements sharing right-of-way with vehicular traffic have adverse impacts on the mobility of the traffic stream. Pedestrian movements both along and across the road often force drivers of approaching vehicles either to stop completely or to slow down and change the existing lane. It ultimately results in a decrease in stream speed. With the aim of determining the influence of pedestrian movements, the present study collected traffic data at a standard section (without pedestrian movements) and both traffic and pedestrian data at a pedestrian section (with considerable pedestrian movements). To determine the speed at the standard section, this paper presents a novel ‘Lambert W function’-based speed prediction model in the context of a two-lane undivided urban road. When stream speeds of the pedestrian section were compared to the stream speeds obtained through the speed prediction model at the same traffic volume condition in absence of pedestrians, a significant reduction was observed. This reduction in stream speed is governed by pedestrian parameters. A new pedestrian parameter ‘lateral position of pedestrian from the edge while walking along the road’ was conceived in this study along with few other parameters to predict Percent Speed Reduction (PSR). Intensities of these pedestrian parameters were observed varying over time which results in a high fluctuation in PSR within a range of 29% to 62%. Finally, this investigation forwards an empirical model of Percent Speed Reduction (PSR) to predict the stream speed in the presence of on-street pedestrian movements on undivided urban roads. The outcome of this paper will help transport planners to estimate the efficiency of pedestrian infrastructure projects before implementation.
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