Capacity Analysis of Pedestrian Treatments at Large Arterial Intersections and Comparison with a Lane-Equivalent, Small Intersection Gridded Network
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 139, Issue 4
Abstract
Intersections of major six-lane arterial roadways and minor four-lane arterial roadways are becoming increasingly common across the United States, in part due to the proliferation of hierarchical street design. Such intersections typically have dedicated turn lanes, resulting in large expanses of pavement that make accommodating pedestrians a difficult proposition. Using microsimulation to create over 1,200 scenarios, this research presents the level of service impact of trying to accommodate pedestrian crossings for 117 combinations of vehicle volumes, with the results suggesting that accommodating even modest levels of pedestrian activity will drastically reduce vehicular capacity. The same procedure was repeated for typical mitigation strategies such as slip lanes/pork-chop islands and two-stage pedestrian crossings with minimal improvement. Intersection performance is then compared to a lane-equivalent gridded street network of smaller intersections with the results suggesting that a finer-grained street network is far superior both in terms of accommodating pedestrians as well as overall vehicular capacity.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 139 • Issue 4 • December 2013
Pages: 241 - 249
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 5, 2012
Accepted: Apr 11, 2013
Published online: Nov 15, 2013
Published in print: Dec 1, 2013
Discussion open until: Apr 15, 2014
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