The Transit Cooperative Research Program and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program are jointly sponsoring project D-08/3-71 on "Improving Pedestrian Safety at Unsignalized Roadway Crossings." One of the objectives of the research is to recommend modifications to the MUTCD pedestrian traffic signal warrant. This ITE paper provides an analysis of the adequacy of the pedestrian traffic signal warrant contained in the current MUTCD. The current warrant includes primary factors, such as available vehicular gaps (based on critical gap), pedestrian volume, and distance to the nearest traffic signal. A secondary factor is the adjustments to pedestrian volumes based on the average walking speed. Despite the wide range of factors included in the current pedestrian signal warrant, there are other factors that could be considered. For example, it seems reasonable to expect a correlation between acceptable gap criteria and factors such as pedestrian age, pedestrian walking abilities, vehicle speed, and roadway cross-section. There is also no mention of safety considerations within the warrant. Other needed attributes of the warrant could be a reference to alternative traffic control and how to determine the size of the adequate gap length. A comparison between similar pedestrian and vehicle warrants revealed that vehicle warrants use a sliding scale while the pedestrian warrant uses absolute values. The absolute values are higher than the lower threshold values assumed for vehicles. The vehicle warrants also include a reduction factor for population and major roadway speed that is not currently present in the pedestrian warrant.
Abstract