Capacity measures for pedestrian crossing movements.

This paper analyses several crossing strategies, adopted by pedestrians in difficult circumstances, to determine a notional strategy for their movements. In fixed strategies, a pedestrian crosses at a fixed place. In mobile strategies, a pedestrian walks along a road, until there is a suitable opportunity to cross. Mobile strategies are very important in delay minimisation. The capacity of a road link, for pedestrians using a mobile strategy, is the maximum number of pedestrians who can cross before reaching the end of the link. It ranges between zero, for roads with heavy traffic, to `infinity', for roads with very light traffic, and depends on the link length and on walking speed. Pedestrians also have several sceondary crossing strategies. For mid-block crossing capacity, results are obtained for the capacity of an unimproved road, the introduction of a central refuge, and the use of one or two lanes. The results of queue and delay calculations, using time-dependent queueing theory, are compared with corresponding results developed from empirical studies of pedestrian delays in British towns.