An-Najah Staff

 The operational characteristics of major arterials depend on their geometric and traffic conditions. The Highway Capacity Manual, 2010 (HCM) has developed an integrated multimodal approach to evaluate the quality of service along urban streets. This approach emphasizes four different transportation modes, automobile, pedestrian, transit, and bicycle. While the HCM procedures are widely used for capacity and level of service analysis, there are several factors that are not comprehensively addressed. One of these factors is the effect of pedestrians mid block crossing. In this paper, a multimodal microscopic simulation approach is used to address the significance of random mid block crossing on the operational characteristics of urban arterials in developing countries. Such phenomenon of pedestrians random crossing of urban streets is commonly observed in developing countries. The study corridor is selected to be a major urban arterial segment located in a major city. The selected segment experiences high pedestrian volumes and vehicular traffic interaction. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic counts are collected during the morning, mid-day and the evening peaks. VISSIM microscopic simulation environment is calibrated based on traffic and speed studies. Three different pedestrians crossing cases are compared. The first scenario ignores the pedestrian movements, to present the base condition. The second scenario uses mid block pedestrians movement using a five-meter crossing area. The third scenario allows pedestrians to randomly cross the street, within a range of 100 meter. Simulation results have shown that the scenario when pedestrians are allowed to randomly cross the study corridor is the one that has resulted in lower operational speed, and much higher delay and number of stops. It is recommended that the nature of pedestrian movement should be integrated within the HCM procedures.