Walking speeds for timing of pedestrian walk and clearance intervals

© 2018 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. Using suitable pedestrian crossing speeds for traffic signal design would have significant impacts on safety and efficiency at signalised intersections. This paper investigates pedestrian crossing speeds at signalised intersections for the Green Walk time and Flashing Red Don’t Walk time. Video data of pedestrian crossings were recorded at two signalised intersections in Melbourne and analysed using Kinovea, an open-source motion video analysis software. Overall, results show that the average speed and 15th percentile crossing speed from all survey sites and crossing types are 1.49 m/s and 1.25 m/s respectively. The overall 15th percentile speed of 1.25 m/s is close to the normal walking speed (1.2 m/s) often adopted for both Green Walk and Flashing Red Don’t Walk time design (e.g. Austroads’ 2016 guide). However, the speeds of crossings started in Flashing Red Don’t Walk time (average speed of 1.63 m/s and 15th percentile speed of 1.37 m/s) are significantly higher when compared to crossings started in Green Walk time (average speed of 1.45 m/s and 15th percentile speed of 1.25 m/s). Particularly, the 15th percentile speed of crossings started in Flashing Red Don’t Walk time for the survey site in Hawthorn, Melbourne is 1.43 m/s, which is close to the design speed for Flashing Red Don’t Walk time adopted by VicRoads (1.5 m/s). These findings suggest that a higher design speed can be adopted for Flashing Red Don’t Walk time than for Green Walk time. Results also indicate that pedestrians who have already passed the middle of the road when the signal turned from Green Walk to Flashing Red Don’t Walk have a lower speed during the rest of the crossing.