The authors quantified the changes in both utilization characteristics and traffic conflict risk at signalized intersections with improvement of geometry and developed the evaluation model for measuring traffic conflicts between left/right-turn vehicles and pedestrians in order to clarify the relationship among the size of intersection, users’ behaviors and traffic safety. Through the before-after analysis, it was found that the risky behaviors during inter-green period such as rushing into intersection for both drivers and pedestrians have decreased and the traffic conflict risk has also drastically reduced by the compactly-modified intersection. It was also revealed by the developed risk estimation model that the longer time the left/right-turn vehicle requires to pass at intersections, the higher conflict risk occurs. And it was confirmed that the traffic conflict risk may be reduced by the further improvement of intersection geometry through the sensitivity analysis. (Author/publisher)
Abstract