Study On Intersections With Median Bus Rapid Transit Stations: Focused On Pedestrians' Street Crossing Characteristics

Dedicated Median Busway for BRT, which is one of the most important measures to ensure the bus priority, is adopted widely both at home and abroad. One of the problems faced when using Dedicated Median Busway is the pedestrians' crossing problem, especially when the BRT station is located at the intersections, and thus BRT passengers and pedestrians have to use the same crosswalk. In China, the research on BRT is at the beginning step, no one has done research on this issue. As a result, a systematic and in-depth research on this topic is essential.The dissertation has carried out the study on the pedestrian crossing characteristics, including pedestrians' arrival frequency distribution, walking speed, pedestrian flow, and capacity of pedestrian crosswalk from both a macroscopic microscopic view. A series of achievements have been made in some aspects.Firstly, a systematic literature review is made on the studies of BRT planning and construction, pedestrian crossing characteristics, pedestrian flow models and crosswalk capacity. The current research is mainly focused on conceptual design, which lacks data and theory support. Based on the above analyses, the main study issues were introduced.(1) Pedestrian crossing characteristics are analyzed from a microscopic view, including pedestrians' arrival frequency and crossing speed. Pedestrians are divided into road-side pedestrians and mid-road pedestrians, which also means the BRT passengers. Through data analyzing, we know that the arrival of road-side pedestrians obeys negative binomial distribution, which is the same with the common arrival distribution. The arrival of mid-road pedestrians is periodic, the period and width is not stable and is affected greatly by BRT operation. The arrival distribution of mid-road pedestrians is concluded on ideal and actual situation.(2) The study on pedestrians speed is mainly focused on the influence of BRT station, trip purposes, crosswalk section and passenger volume. The outcome shows that the average speed is 1.22m/s on the crosswalk which is near BRT station, contrasting to 1.27m/s at normal intersections. With the increase of passenger volume, walking speed will drop further.(3) The study of pedestrian flow model is from a macroscopic view. The relationship model of the three pedestrian flow characteristics, volume, speed and density, is constructed based on the surveyed data. The model is the same with other models in general, but has some specialty. A mechanism analysis is presented later. Based this model, the theoretical crosswalk capacity is calculated, about 4200p/h·m. The crosswalk capacity under different passenger volume is got from further study.The characteristics of pedestrian flow are analyzed when the mid-road BRT station is located at the intersections. Pedestrian flow model and crosswalk capacity model is constructed, which solves the passenger arrival frequency and crosswalk capacity problem. The research results provide data and theoretical support for the planning, design and management of such kind of intersection and crosswalk. Further study includes signal coordination of crossing pedestrians and BRT priority, the influence of such BRT station to intersections, integral design of station and crosswalk and comparison to pedestrian crossing problem of other BRT station modes and so on.