Estimating Pedestrian Impact on Coordination of Urban Corridors

At most of the US signal, pedestrian walk timings run in concurrence with relevant
vehicular traffic signal phases which means that major-street coordinated operations can
be interrupted by a pedestrian call. Such interruption may increase delays and stops for
major traffic flows. An alternative to this design is to increase the cycle length and embed
pedestrian timings within the ring-barrier structure of the prevailing coordination plan.
Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. This study attempts a novel approach
to address this situation by a comprehensive experimental evaluation of traffic performance
under various pedestrian signal timing strategies. Findings show that either
abovementioned approach works well for very low traffic demands. When the traffic
demand increases findings cannot be generalized as they differ for major coordinated
movements versus overall network performance. While coordinated movements prefer no
interruption of the coordinated operations, the overall network performance is better in the
other case.