Pedestrian temporal and spatial gap acceptance at mid-block street crossing in developing world

• We modeled gap acceptance for pedestrians at uncontrolled midblock crossing.
• Both temporal and spatial gaps are studied.
• Approaching vehicle speed inversely affects the spatial gap acceptance probability.
• Conflicting vehicle type influences the acceptance behavior of pedestrians.
• 50th and 85th percentile gap values are smaller in India.

IntroductionMost of the midblock pedestrian crossings on urban roads in India are uncontrolled; wherein the high degree of discretion in pedestrians' behavior while crossing the traffic stream, has made the situation complex to analyze. Vehicles do not yield to pedestrians, even though the traffic laws give priority to pedestrians over motorized vehicles at unsignalized pedestrian crossings. Therefore, a pedestrian has to decide if an available gap is safe or not for crossing.MethodThis paper aims to investigate pedestrian temporal and spatial gap acceptance for midblock street crossings. Field data were collected using video camera at two midblock pedestrian crossings. The data extraction in laboratory resulted in 1107 pedestrian gaps. Available gaps, pedestrians' decision, traffic volume, etc. were extracted from the videos. While crossing a road with multiple lanes, rolling gap acceptance behavior was observed. Using binary logit analysis, six utility models were developed, three each for temporal and spatial gaps.Results and conclusionsThe 50th percentile temporal and spatial gaps ranged from 4.1 to 4.8 s and 67 to 79 m respectively, whereas the 85th percentile temporal and spatial gaps ranged from 5 to 5.8 s and 82 to 95 m respectively. These gap values were smaller than that reported in the studies in developed countries. The speed of conflicting vehicle was found to be significant in spatial gap but not in temporal gap acceptance. The gap acceptance decision was also found to be affected by the type of conflicting vehicles.Practical applicationsThe insights from this study can be used for the safety and performance evaluation of uncontrolled midblock street crossings in developing countries.