Analysis of Pedestrian Safety Performance at Signalized Intersections in Costa Rica

Author(s): Rebecca Peterniak, Jeannette Montufar
Dr. Charles H. Miller Award

Slidedeck Presentation:

4B Peterniak_Red Walking on the Pan-American Highway

Abstract:

This paper uses surrogate safety measures to analyze pedestrian safety performance at signalized intersections on the Pan-American Highway in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica. Pedestrian safety performance is defined in terms of signal compliance and conflicts. Pedestrians constitute the highest proportion of fatal collisions in Costa Rica and are primarily accommodated at signalized intersections when crossing urban roadways. Pedestrian compliance and conflict data was manually collected for over 13,000 crossing pedestrians at 20 signalized intersections on a 2.4 km study segment during a two month period. The data was analyzed to determine signal compliance characteristics; conflict severity and characteristics; the distribution of pedestrian conflicts during each interval of the pedestrian phase; and the relationship between pedestrian gender and safety. This paper presents the analysis results for the intersection with the poorest signal compliance on the study segment. Infrastructure and operational factors contributing to poor signal compliance and conflicts, as well as opportunities to improve pedestrian safety at this intersection are discussed. The results of this research improve the understanding of pedestrian safety at signalized intersections and the developed methodology can be applied in other jurisdictions conduct evaluations.