A study of pedestrian crossing speed setting at signalized intersections considering the elderly people’ ratio in China

The crossing design speed at the signalized intersection should be decreased with the elderly pedestrian ratio increased. The crossing speed data of 3896 pedestrians at 6 crosswalks of 4 signalized intersections under different level of service in Chongqing, China, were used; by fitting pedestrian flow and speed at different pedestrian levels of service, it was found that pedestrian crossing speed was influenced by pedestrian traffic flow from level of service of D to F. Using the surveyed cumulative speed curves of different types of pedestrians as input, pedestrian crossing simulation scenarios at level A, B and C were constructed, respectively; then, the 15th percentile of pedestrian crossing speed was extracted with the crossing proportion of elderly people increasing from 0 to 100% in a step of 5%, respectively; the weight of pedestrian level of service and the proportion of elderly people were determined using criteria importance though inter-criteria correlation (CRITIC) weight assignment method; thus, the weight of pedestrian crossing speed at level A, B and C were obtained. The pedestrian speed at different levels of service was fitted using the weights, and the obtained curves were nonlinear; the fitting curves were processed using the unknown inflection point regression model. The design pedestrian crossing speed was recommended as follows: 1.16 m/s at a level of service from level A to C and the proportion of elderly people < 22%; 0.99 m/s at the proportion of elderly people lying between 22%-45%; 0.89 m/s at the proportion of elderly people over 45%.