Pelican crossings are well established in the UK allowing pedestrians to cross roads safely without excessive disruption to traffic. In recent years however, there has been an increasing feeling that Pelicans could be improved. To address this, the PUFFIN crossing has been developed. In an effort to further improve PUFFIN crossings, a trial has been carried out in which four styles of crossing were assessed against one another at a single site. The four styles were standard Pelican, standard PUFFIN, PUFFIN with standard MOVA, and PUFFIN with volume sensitive MOVA. The standard PUFFIN and Pelican used full D-system VA (Vehicle Actuation) with speed-assessment. The other two surveys involved the use of MOVA, the latter with a new style of overhead detector that measures the 'volume' of pedestrians waiting to cross, enabling MOVA to better balance the delays of pedestrians and vehicles. The site had substantial pedestrian activity during the day with a peak around lunch time. Traffic levels were relatively high and constant during the day with no pronounced peaks. During each of the four one-day surveys, delays to both pedestrians and vehicular traffic were measured and compared. Pedestrian behaviour was also studied. Both MOVA control strategies (i.e. with and without volume sensitivity) had time-dependent delay weighting that increased the importance of pedestrians as their waiting time increased. This changed the balance of delays in favour of pedestrians; MOVA did this efficiently causing little change in delay overall. The results are presented in the paper.
Abstract