An observational study on pedestrian and bicyclist violations at railroad grade crossings: Exploring the impact of geometrical and operational attributes.

INTRODUCTION

In order to enhance the existing body of research regarding the prevalence of violations committed by pedestrians and bicyclists, this observational study utilized personal-specific, train-specific, operational, and behavioral data extracted from recorded videos at seven railroad grade crossings (RRGCs).

METHOD: A total of 7,332 pedestrians and 1,684 bicyclist crossing events were observed during 279 gate operation phases at seven study locations. First, two separate violation models (binary logit) for pedestrians and bicyclists were developed to determine the influence of personal-specific characteristics and other behavioral traits on probability of pedestrians' and bicyclists' violation. Later, the impact of various geometrical (railway track, distance between gates, distance between gate and nearest track, and road width) and operational (train vehicle unit) parameters on the factors that caused non-motorist violations was examined by developing distinctbinary logit models.

RESULTS

The probability of pedestrians'and bicyclists' violationwas found to be significantly influenced by train characteristics (train speed and train occupancy time), gate operational attributes (warning time and gate blockage duration), and personal-specificcharacteristics (gender, age, crossing speed, and looking both side). Furthermore, geometrical attributes along with train vehicle unit were observed to have impact over various factors that significantly influenced the behavior of pedestrians and bicyclists to violate.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: The findings of this research provide essential information that could be applied in the initiatives of user awareness and enforcement program, emphasis on situational awareness and design of operational and geometricalelementsto significantlylimitthe effects of risky walking andbicycling behavior at RRGCs.