GIS multicriteria pedestrian crossing risk assessment in bus rapid transit

P. P. Silva de Souza
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I. C. Leal Junior
Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

ABSTRACT: Pedestrian crashes in the surroundings of transit stations are linked not only with immediate access conditions. A wide range of land use and micro-accessibility indicators highly influence pedestrian risk, even for non-commuters. In this paper, pedestrian risk was evaluated in Transoeste Bus Rapid Transit, in Rio de Janeiro, through a multi-criteria decision matrix and further spatial data analysis. A newly implemented system, the segregated fast lanes of this BRT corridor caused five pedestrian casualties in six months of operation. The objective of this study is to provide operators with a risk heatmap indicating which areas requires special attention, such as operational interventions or educational campaigns. 1 INTRODUCTION Transoeste is a BRT corridor in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro. It connects the region of Barra da Tijuca to Santa Cruz, being completely apart from the general traffic in its majority. Nowadays it takes less than one hour to travel on a route that has usually taken one hour and forty minutes (SILVA DE SOUZA, 2012). The implantation of a BRT corridor is a big engineering job that involves a large change in the traffic routine. Thus, there were several mishaps during Transoestes implantation. Since its operation began, in June of 2012, there were five accidents with fatal victims registered. In all these cases, the pedestrians were crossing the street inappropriately. In fact, this characteristic is not exclusive of Transoestes system. TIWARI & JAIN (2012) analyzed New Delhi BRT and showed that, after its inauguration in 2008, the pedestrians turned out to be the most vulnerable category in terms of accidents. Along the 6 km corridor there were four fatal accidents during the eight fist months of operation. This scenery could only be changed through engineering fits that minimized the risks. Other examples can be found in the international literature. For example, RODRGUEZ & BRISSON (2009) distinguish the influence of connectivity and microaccessibility on pedestrian flows near the stations of Transmilenio, in Bogot. In this work we have analyzed the 13 km stretch on Avenida das Amricas between Terminal Alvorada and Recreio Shopping. It was considered the most critical section of Transoestes corridor in terms of running overs. In order to establish which areas on this stretch are the most critical, two methodologies were chosen. The first was to go on a site visit to evaluate the crossings near each bus stop along the section, collecting data for an Analytic Hierarchical Procedure matrix. The second one included a simple spatial regression of the historical data about running overs for the model analysis. 2 ON SITE SURVEY A site visit was performed in July 2012 in order to diagnose the pedestrian crossing conditions along the evaluated section on Transoeste. The most inappropriate crossings occurred when pedestrians were boarding or alighting the conventional buses, in several stops along the side lane. Thus we can assume that the accessibility to the BRT stations is a major aspect, but it should not be considered as the main focus of the evaluation in this case study. ZEEGER & OPIELA (1985) studied 1,297 run overs in 15 American cities. They found out that, in fact, the accident prediction model they obtained indicates there were more accidents on the sites nearer bus stops. It happened especially due to the visual obstruction caused by the buses and the bus stop equipment, for both pedestrians and drivers. Based on this assumption we evaluated 43 bus stops, in both directions, located in the influence zone of the first 18 stations on the corridor. Geometric features and the several kinds of inappropriate

pedestrian crossings were measured. Figures 1 and 2 show some of the most common project misconceptions encountered during the visit.

of abstract factors, as those encountered in the pedestrian risk assessment. In order to prepare the AHP decision matrix the evaluations made on the site visit were traduced as indexes. This matrix will point the risks of crossing around each station. 3.1 Indexes Definition Most studies indicate that the volumes of pedestrian and traffic are major determinant issues for the running over frequency. They also point the vehicle speed as one of the principal factors that contribute for the severity of these accidents (MORENO & MORENCY, 2011). However, two observations should be made for the situation studied in this work. First, the pedestrian volume data of the evaluated region are weakly available. Besides, the main focus of this work is to infer some steps that could be adopted to reduce the risks of accidents. So the variables related to pedestrian and vehicle volumes would be inefficient as they could hardly be moderated. A fewer number of studies measured the effects of the geometric graphic attributes, such as the road width, the number of lanes, the occurrence of crossings, the existence of median strip, the sort of turn restrictions, etc. (HARWOOD & TORBIC, 2008). In the BRT Transoeste study we adopted five main indexes: Access to BRT station: it is a Boolean variable. It assumes whether there are or not BRT feeder bus lines on the observed stop. Total walking distance: it represents the passenger impedance for crossing the street on appropriate locals. The larger the walking distance the bigger the impedance. Negative displacement extension: it is considered one of the most critical variables. It represents the possibility for the passenger of performing an incorrect crossing when the BRT station and the ordinary bus stop are aligned (Figure 3). Pedestrian flow: it is a qualitative variable of the pedestrian volumes in the region, based on the surrounding hubs such as shopping centers and condominiums. Sidewalk quality: it is a qualitative variable about the sidewalk quality in the region. It shuttles the impedance of the passenger walking distance towards the appropriate crossing place, since there are areas with no sidewalk. After defining the indexes, the distance values were measured in proper geoprocessing software, while the semantic observations were converted to numerical values and tabulated, as shown on Table 1.

Figure 1 Pedestrians crossing inappropriately, encouraged by the long walking distance up to the zebra crossing.

Figure 2 Bus bay incorrectly placed, reducing the sidewalk to a minimum extent.

3 ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS One of the most used methods for multicriteria decisions all over the world is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). It was created by Thomas. L. Saaty in the mid-1970. It emerged to promote the overcoming of cognitive limits of the managers who take decisions. According to this method, the problem of taking decision can be usually broken down in hierarchic levels, making it easier to understand and evaluate the issues (BARAAS & MACHADO, 2006). Thus, AHP poses itself as a optimal tool when dealing with problems that involve a plurality

Table 1. Pedestrian risk assessment indexes obtained during site visit, for each regular bus stop ________________________________________________
Bus Stop Stop-Z* Z-Station* People Sidewalk Distance. Distance Flow Quality ________________ m m ________________________________________________ 1A YES 150 -35 MED POOR 1B YES 300 -35 MED POOR 2A YES UNDERGROUND PASS 2B NO 280 HIGH GOOD 2C NO 230 HIGH GOOD 3A YES 90 35 HIGH POOR 4A NO 390 MED POOR 4B NO 400 MED POOR 4C YES 395 35 LOW POOR 4D YES 315 35 LOW POOR 5A YES 55 -35 LOW GOOD 6A NO 530 LOW POOR 6B NO 320 LOW POOR 7A YES 100 -35 LOW POOR 7B NO 320 LOW POOR 8A YES 50 -30 MED GOOD 9A YES 30 -35 LOW POOR 10A YES 80 80 HIGH GOOD 10B YES 80 -80 HIGH GOOD 11A YES 75 -40 MED GOOD 11B YES 60 40 MED GOOD 12A YES 35 35 HIGH GOOD 12B YES 12 35 HIGH GOOD 12C YES 35 -35 HIGH GOOD 13A YES 50 -35 MED GOOD 13B YES 30 -35 MED GOOD 13C NO 280 MED GOOD 13D NO 90 MED GOOD 14A NO 85 LOW GOOD 14B YES 50 -35 MED GOOD 14C YES 65 35 MED GOOD 15A YES 45 -35 LOW GOOD 15B YES 130 35 MED GOOD 15C NO 210 MED GOOD 15D NO 210 MED GOOD 16A YES 110 -35 HIGH GOOD 16B YES 0 35 HIGH GOOD 17B YES 72 35 LOW GOOD 17C YES 60 -35 LOW GOOD 17D NO 135 LOW GOOD 17E NO 135 LOW GOOD 18A YES 170 -70 HIGH GOOD 18B YES 30 -70 HIGH GOOD _________________________________________________ * Distances between the zebra crossing and the bus stops and the BRT station, respectively. Negative value indicates negative displacement. BRT Acess

Figure 3 Most common situation when a negative displacement ocurrs.

3.2 Creating the AHP model using the software Expert Choice The model was developed in the commercial software Expert Choice, that facilitates the develop of AHP analysis using standardized indexes in a 0-1 scale. We obtained the weight among indexes by comparing pairwise. This is one of the major advantages of the AHP compared to the Delphi method (AL-HARBI, 2001). For each of the numeric values, the standardization was obtained adapting the linear equation for the variables of Total Walking Distance and Negative Displacement Extension. Following, indexes were compared pairwise based on the opinion of the experts that had gone to the site visit. The ones that got the higher weight criteria were those which produce more run overs, as it follows below: Negative displacement (0,48) Pedestrian flow (0,24) Walking distance (0,20) Sidewalk quality (0,04) BRT station access (0,04) Finally, all the values shown on Table 1 where added to the software in order to run the analysis. Thus we got the summary presented on Figure 4, ordered from higher to lower risks of running overs on the BRT corridor.

4 SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF AHP RESULTS For a better understanding of the obtained results, a spatial analysis was run on the pedestrian risk, in order to make a comparison with historical data available on the region prior to the BRT implementation.

Figure 5 Comparison between AHP spatial results and historical data, respectively.

4.1 Kernel density estimation The Kernel density estimation indicates how often a punctual process happens throughout the study region, associating events intensity per area unity to a bidimensional surface. (ROCHA & NASSI, 2012). The spatial regression of the AHP matrix shown similar results to the kernel density through historical accidents data, acquired from the police database from 2008 to 2011. The most critical spot observed on historical data is exactly the location of Bosque da Barra station, and where 60% of the deaths have happened so far. Thus, one can infer that, while the model has shown a great similarity to actual data, no special attention was paid to this situation prior to the implementation of the BRT Corridor.

5 CONCLUSIONS This preliminary work has provided a guideline of which stretches were more likely to accidents and, then, deserved special attention. That way, the system operator was able to focus on these places through education campains. Even though no complex intervention has been made, like the unalignament of bus stops, for example, no other pedestrian crash has been recorded since the application of this work. The future potential is to obtain a wider model, in a way that is possible to predict the critical hotspots during the project phase, even before the implementation of the BRT corridor. REFERENCES
AL-HARBI, K.-S. (2001). Application of the AHP in project management. International Journal of Project Management 19, pp. 19-27. BARAAS, F., & MACHADO, J. (2006). A anlise multicritrio na tomada de deciso o Mtodo Analtico Hierrquico de T. L. Saaty. Princpios fundamentais e seu desenvolvimento. Instituto Politcnico de Coimbra. Departamento de Engenharia Civil. HARWOOD, D., & TORBIC, D. (2008). Pedestrian safety prediction methodology. Final Report. Washington D.C.: NCHRP (National Cooperative Highway Research Program). MORENO, L., & MORENCY, P. (2011). The link between built environment, pedestrian activity and pedestrian vehicle collision occurrence at signalized intersections. Accident Analysis and Prevention 43. ROCHA, M., & NASSI, C. (2012). Anlise Estatstica e da Distribuio Espacial dos Acidentes de Trnsito na Zona Sul da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro . PLURIS. RODRGUEZ, D., & BRISSON, E. (2009). The relationship between segment-level built environment attributes and pedestrian activity around Bogotas BRT stations. Transportation Research Part D 14, pp. 470-478. SILVA DE SOUZA, P. (2012). Evoluo da Rede de Mobilidade Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro. Escola Politcnica da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Departamento de Engenharia de Transportes.

Figure 4 AHP matrix top 20 results, ordered from highest to lowest pedestrian risk

TIWARI, G., & JAIN, D. (2012). Accessibility and safety indicators for all road users: case study Delhi BRT. Journal of Transport Geography, pp. 87-95. ZEGEER, C., & OPIELA, K. (1985). Pedestrian Signalization Alternatives. Federal Highway Administration.