Study on the Lateral Position Characteristics of Non-Motor Vehicles on the Urban Branch Roads

On most urban branch roads, there are no physical isolation facilities between motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles. As a relatively vulnerable group, non-motor vehicle travel space is squeezed by the lateral interference. Therefore, this paper aims to make a comparison study on the lateral position distribution characteristics of non-motor vehicles on two types of branch road: Type 1 sets no non-motorized lanes; and Type 2 sets the non-motorized lane with the isolation lines. This study distinguishes non-motor vehicles into four patterns: free-riding bicycles (FB); free-riding electric bicycles (FE); blocked riding bicycles (BB); and blocked riding electric bicycles (BE), based on whether the rider is affected by other vehicles, pedestrians or obstacles during the observing process. The trajectories including lateral positions of non-motor vehicles were extracted from video data. Finally, the lateral position distribution characteristics of non-motor vehicles were discussed. It is found that bicycles tended to ride on the outer side of the road (near the sidewalk), regardless of whether there was an isolation line or not. As for electric bicycles, the line had a certain binding force for FEs. But BEs tended to occupy the middle section of the road, the boundaries of which were about 1 m away from the sidewalk and the central divider in most cases.