Empirical and simulation study of traffic delay at un-signalized crosswalks due to conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles

The average is usually applied to describe the traffic delay, and the environmental factors are considered to influence it. However, the distribution and the influencing individual behavior on traffic delay is seldom investigated. An observational study shows that pedestrian and vehicle delay follow exponential and power-law distributions. Since they are left-skewed and fat-tailed, the average delay fails to describe the Level Of Service (LOS) in some traffic conditions. To confirm that traffic delay follows these distributions in other situations, a simulation study is conducted. The results coincide with the empirical ones. A new indicator-the average of the longest 20% delay, is developed. It provides a better estimate of LOS than the average of the whole in describing traffic conditions, especially the congested ones. Moreover, pedestrian assertive behavior is a critical influencing factor on traffic delay. The results indicate that the characteristics of the delay distribution is worthy of note.