TITLE:
Transit Bus and Pedestrian Safety Analysis in the Context of Operator Improvements and Traffic Volume Assessment
AUTHORS:
Seri Park, Vanvi Trieu
KEYWORDS:
Pedestrian Safety, Intersection Safety, Public Transit Bus, Countermeasures, Hourly Traffic Volume
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Civil Engineering,
Vol.4 No.2,
June
25,
2014
ABSTRACT: Pedestrian safety related to public bus transit is an integral part of
promoting sustainability especially in the urban setting. This concept has
received significant attention within the last decade as transit agencies
strive to make their systems more sustainable and safer at the same time. This
study examined pedestrian collisions related to public transit buses in
Philadelphia over a three-year study period from 2008 to 2011. The objective is
to perform a detailed analysis on crash records, which provides the foundation
on statistics for bus-pedestrian collision to allow for future studies in
modeling work in this field. Results of this research provided insights on bus-pedestrian collisions in terms of bus maneuver, cause of crash, impact point of
bus, and relation to hourly traffic volume. A strong correlation was found
between traffic volume and bus-pedestrian collision rate in terms of hours of
the day. For any given hour, an increase in collision frequency was found if
the traffic volume exceeds a threshold of 5% of its average annual daily
traffic. This serves as an indicator of locations that pedestrians are
vulnerable at. Analyses were conducted to the fullest extent allowable by the
limited dataset. This study presents findings that can be future developed and
investigated in future studies. Additionally, countermeasures are recommended
in each section that presents a critical area to address.