PEDESTRIAN-ACTUATED CROSSWALK FLASHERS

A determined group of residents of a retirement home demanded that a traffic signal be installed to help them cross a busy street. The problem with the location in question was that the crosswalk was located on an arterial street at a minor side street with approach volumes well below the minimum signal warrant requirements. Given the speed and volume of the vehicular traffic, the retirees were having difficulty safely crossing the street. Unfortunately, simply installing a standard flashing beacon would have only provided only marginally better protection for the pedestrians. Because the amount of pedestrian traffic was light, drivers would only occasionally encounter a pedestrian in the crosswalk and it was feared that drivers would begin to ignore a continuously flashing beacon. The deal with this problem, the city traffic engineering staff chose to borrow an ideas employed by other devices such as school flashers and railroad crossing flashing light signals. For this crosswalk, it was decided to install advance and intersection flashers that would be activated by the pedestrian and would flash only during the time a pedestrian was actually in the crosswalk. In order to test the effectiveness of this concept, a number of different types of studies were conducted at this and other locations in the Chattanooga area. Driver behavior studies were made where the crosswalk flashers have been in place for several years to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of the devices. At one other location an opinion survey was conducted to gauge pedestrian satisfaction with the flashers. Finally, a survey of other similar pedestrian-actuated crosswalk flasher programs in other cities across the country was conducted and summarized.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • Full conference proceedings available on CD-ROM, ISBN 0-935403-48-5.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)

    Washington, DC  United States 
  • Authors:
    • Van Winkle, J W
    • Neal, D A
  • Conference:
  • Publication Date: 2000

Language

  • English

Media Info

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00809256
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Apr 27 2001 12:00AM