Analysis of Pedestrian-Crossing Speed Characteristics at Traffic Intersections

Using mounted video camera to collect pedestrian-crossing behavior at intersections, this study investigated the behavior characteristics and the corresponding impact factors. A pedestrian-velocity extraction method based on video images was proposed using perspective transformation, with which the descriptive statistics and spatial distribution of pedestrian-crossing speed were derived. The impacts of age, gender, population density, length of pedestrian crosswalk, and crossing-timing on pedestrian-crossing speed were also investigated. Finally, implications of this study for design speed of pedestrian crosswalk were discussed. Based on 940 intersection-crossing pedestrians from 10 intersections, the results showed that the average intersection-crossing speed was 1.45 m/s; pedestrians had larger speeds in the middle part of the crosswalk; elder pedestrians had the slowest crossing speeds; male pedestrians had faster crossing speeds than females ones; pedestrians had slower crossing speed when they were in larger groups; and the proper design speed for crosswalk was 1.1–1.2 m/s.