Pedestrian Timing Treatment for Coordinated Signal Systems

Pedestrian timing has always been one of the major issues while developing signal timing plans for coordinated signal systems. There are two alternative treatments on pedestrian timings: timing based on pedestrian minimums where the required pedestrian crossing times are accommodated in the signal phase splits, and timing based on vehicle minimums where the phase splits are determined only based on vehicle demand. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the various effects of the two pedestrian treatment alternatives through a case study. Various timing strategies were identified to minimize the negative effect while timing based on pedestrian minimums. These timing strategies include the appropriate setting of offsets, the effective use of side street phasing, and the use of maximum recall. It was found that although timing based on vehicle minimums can generally result in a shorter system cycle length, timing based on pedestrian minimums can normally achieve the same operational efficiency. The most significant advantage of timing based on pedestrian minimums is that the signal system will always remain in coordination. The only drawback of timing based on pedestrian minimums is the likely use of longer cycle length. It is recommended that timing based on pedestrian minimum technique should be applied when longer cycle length is required for the system, and medium to high level pedestrian crossing activities exist.