PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE IMPACTS ON SIGNALIZED INTERSECTION OPERATION: THE U.S. EXPERIENCE

At signalized intersections, right of way allocation must not only consider conflicting vehicle movements, but also account for conflicts of vehicle with pedestrians and bicycles. Presently, the U.S. Highway Capacity Manual considers the impact of pedestrians on right and unopposed left turn movements capacity only, while their effect on permissive left turns is ignored. Bicycles on the other hand are assumed to act as motor vehicle-equivalents in some cases (e.g. on through lanes) and as pedestrians in others (e.g. when conflicting with a right-turn movement). These ad-hoc approaches to pedestrian and bicycle analyses reflect a lack of nation-wide research that can provide the necessary empirical foundation for model development and validation. This paper presents the results of a nation-wide U.S. study on the effect of pedestrians and bicycles on vehicle movement operations. This paper describes the field studies and recommends analytical and simulation models for capturing pedestrians and bicycles at signalized intersections.