Experimental study on individual level interaction between bicycle and pedestrian

Abstract

With the development of bicycle-sharing, bicycles have become the main means of urban transportation for short-distance trips, sharing the infrastructure with pedestrians. The current situation of bicycle–pedestrian mixed traffic has thus inevitably changed the efficiency of traditional infrastructure. In this paper, a series of controlled experiments were conducted to gain insights on the interaction between bicycle and pedestrian under mixed traffic conditions, including obstacle-avoiding, overtaking and encounter experiments in a 12 m-long, 0.8 m-wide passageway. Results show that under the experimental conditions, the acceleration of bicycles is less than that of pedestrians, and cyclists show no right/left preference when avoiding collisions with an obstacle. In the overtaking experiment, cyclists changed the direction to overtake a pedestrian or bicycle moving in the same direction in front when the distance between them is approximately 2.86 m, which is named as decision distance. For the encounter experiment, the decision distance has significant difference between pedestrian and cyclist. The decision distance of pedestrians is smaller, in contrast, when encountering another from the opposite side of the passageway, the cyclists began to change the forward direction at the initial position. Additionally, the motion state of interactional subject has little impact on the motion speed of bicycles and pedestrians expect for the overtaken bicycles and pedestrians. The results of this study can provide basic parameters on the interaction between bicycles and pedestrians at the individual level for further study of bicycle–pedestrian mixed traffic model.