The effects of selected factors on pedestrian crossings in urban areas

Pedestrian crossings are designed to help pedestrians cross a road. There are at-grade pedestrian crossings with or without traffic lights and grade separated crossings such as subways and footbridges. Pedestrian crossings may be located next to a junction or on road sections between junctions. Where at-grade crossings are involved, pedestrians and motorists interact, which may lead to dangerous situations and road traffic conflicts. These mutual interactions between infrastructure users determine how pedestrian crossings operate. They also affect the operation of junctions, if located next to them. The article presents the most important factors that affect the operation of pedestrian crossings. Because of the multiplicity of factors, only one of the parameters of traffic factors is described in detail.


Introduction
Pedestrian crossings are designed to help pedestrians cross a road [1].There are at-grade pedestrian crossings with or without traffic lights and grade separated crossings such as subways and footbridges [2].Pedestrian crossings may be located next to a junction or on road sections between junctions.Where at-grade crossings are involved, pedestrians and motorists interact, which may lead to dangerous situations and road traffic conflicts [3].These mutual interactions between infrastructure users determine how pedestrian crossings operate.They also affect the operation of junctions, if located next to them.
The article presents the most important factors that affect the operation of pedestrian crossings.Because of the multiplicity of factors, only one of the parameters of traffic factors is described in detail. "

Results
The video footage was evaluated.It helped to analyse the behaviour of some 870 pedestrians.The following characteristics were recorded: pedestrian volume, age divided into youth and adults (working age) and sex.Table 1 shows the results of walking speed analyses.The highest mean speed was recorded for men 5.2 km/h (1.45 m/s) and youth 5 km/h (1.40 m/s) and the lowest for older people 3.4 km/h (0.94 m/s).Mean speed for all groups under analysis was 4.9 km/h (1.36 m/s).The percentiles -15th , 50th and 85th -were analysed and it was found that 15% of pedestrians in the analysed population walked at mean speed of up to 4 km/h (1.13 m/s), 50% of the pedestrians walked at mean speed of up to 4.8 km/h (1.35 m/s) and 15% at a speed higher than 5.6 km/h (1.57m/s).Figure 5 shows the cumulative distribution of pedestrian speeds on the analysed pedestrian crossings.

Conclusions and recommendations for further research
More research should be done to include pedestrian crossings with different layouts and control systems.Further work will include the other parameters, for each group of factors that determine the performance of pedestrian crossings.This will later be used to develop mathematical models of pedestrian traffic.There are plans to conduct analyses using the micro-stimulation tool PTV Vissim with Viswalk module and compare the results with site test results.Finally, tools will be developed to help with planning, designing and auditing pedestrian facilities including a method for selecting the technical parameters and evaluating pedestrian crossings.

Fig. 2 .Fig. 3 .Fig. 4 .3
Fig. 2. Pedestrian accident mortality in Poland, based on [4,5].Speed is a major factor in road accidents involving vehicles and pedestrians and determines accident severity.Fig. 3 shows the likelihood of a pedestrian death in relation to vehicle speed.Swedish researchers Erik Rsen and Ulrich Sander found that their predecessors based their findings on pedestrian serious injury or death which overestimated the risk of becoming a fatality [6,7].Their research shows that the probability of pedestrian fatality is 100% for vehicle speed of app.120 km/h, while other scientists such as R. Anderson claimed it is app.57 km/h and E Pasanen, G. Davis and C. Oh at app. 100 km/h [8-10].