Left-turn phasing selection considering vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to pedestrian conflicts

摘要

Left-turning vehicle movement at signalized intersections with permissive left-turn phases creates safety concerns due to the higher chance of conflict with opposing-through vehicles and pedestrians.In this research,a simulation-based study was conducted to evaluate pedestrians’impact on traffic conflicts between left-turning vehicles and opposing-through vehicles(V-V conflicts)as well as traffic conflicts between left-turning vehicles and pedestrians(V-P conflicts)in the permissive left-turn phasing scenario.Intersections with different opposing-through volumes,left-turn volumes,number of opposing-through lanes,and pedestrian volumes were modeled in VISSIM,a traffic micro-simulator.The surrogate safety assessment model(SSAM)was used to estimate the number of V-V and VP conflicts.The effect of pedestrian presence on V-V and V-P conflicts was evaluated using simulation scenarios with and without pedestrian presence.Simulation results revealed that pedestrian presence increased both V-V and V-P conflicts.As pedestrian presence increased the total number of traffic conflicts,permissive left-turn phasing processed fewer left-turn vehicles to maintain the same level of intersection safety with pedestrian presence compared to the no-pedestrian scenario.Since current left-turn phasing decision guidelines do not consider the impacts of pedestrian presence,this research quantified pedestrian-influenced and pedestrian-involved left-turn traffic conflicts to determine appropriate left-turn signal phasing decisions to ensure safe and efficient crossing of pedestrians and vehicles at signalized intersections.This simulation-based study’s findings can be beneficial in the decision making of left-turn phasing selection as the before-after intersection safety performance analysis by collecting field data often resources intensive.