Why People Cross Where They Do: The Role of Street Environment

Abstract

The role of the street environment in the way people cross roads in urban settings is modeled. Respondents were placed in real traffic conditions at the curbside of street blocks in the Tampa Bay, Florida, area for 3-min observations of the street environments. Without crossing the blocks, respondents stated their crossing preference at each of six blocks. The origin and destination of each crossing were hypothetically set and varied across the blocks. So were the options available: two options for crossing at an intersection and up to four options for crossing at midblock locations. Within the framework of discrete choice models, the stated preferences are explained with the street environment, including traffic conditions, roadway characteristics, and signal-control characteristics. All three components of the street environment are considered: midblock locations, intersections, and roadside environment. The data are described; a nested logit model of pedestrian street-crossing behavior is estimated; and its implications to researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Measuring accident risk exposure for pedestrians in different micro-environments

“…In order to incorporate this parameter in the model, some functions of the nested logit model are used (Chu et al, 2003). In particular, the mid-block branch options of the nested logit model were not exploited so far, but were simply used to obtain the total marginal probability for mid-block.…”

“…Level 2: If junction, which one? In order to model this decision process, we used a nested logit model formulated by Chu et al (2003). In that study, a crossing scenario was presented to survey participants, who were asked to state their crossing preferences.…”

Microssimulação da travessia de pedestres: coleta de dados para calibração de modelos

“…Exceções são o estudo de aceitação de brechas apresentando vídeos aos pedestres, de Schmidt e Färber (2009), e o desenvolvimento de modelos de escolha do local de travessia, não apresentados neste artigo, que utilizam entrevistas, como o de Chu et al (2004). Esse capítulo apresenta uma revisão dos processos de coleta de dados relatados na literatura, em que a extração de dados foi feita de forma automática, semiautomá-tica e manual.…”

A methodology to assess pedestrian crossing safety

“…Many studies can be found about pedestrian accidents characteristics [12,19], pedestrian's and driver's behaviour at crossings [3,4,6,9,17] and evaluation of measures enhancing pedestrian crossings safety [7,13].…”