Pedestrian crossing environments in an emerging Chinese city: Vehicle encountering, seamlesswalking, and sensory perception perspectives

Abstract

While pedestrian crossings play a vital role in providing seamless mobility for pedestrians, they have also continually been spaces of negotiation, contestation, and conflicts between and among different users. Several evidences have shown that such conflict has always been costly, risky, and even fatal to pedestrians. This research aims to assess the pedestrian crossing from an operational perspective in one emerging Chinese city, Suzhou. To evaluate, this research has developed three indices associated with vehicle encountering (VE index), crossing time (CT index) and H-index which refers to audio-sensory perception or a count on the number of horns. This research used video and audio recordings on sample pedestrian crossings. Pedestrians encountered 1.16 vehicles on average when crossing at the sample roads. The average CT index was 1.19 signifying that pedestrians waited for 19% more than their seamless walking when there was no pedestrian crossing. The H index was 5.8 on average at peak time, meaning that there were 5.8 horns (Hs) from vehicles every one minute or approximately one H per every 10 s at a pedestrian crossing. The analysis of these three indices was strengthened by multilevel regression and multi-variable regression analyses. The paper concludes with insights on how the level of safety of inferior walking environments associated with ambiguous traffic rules, vehicle-prioritised traffic behaviours and passive roles of traffic police officers can be improved.