TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

I S S N 1 0 0 7 - 0 2 1 4 1 2 / 1 4 pp 2 1 4 - 2 2 2
Volume 12, Number 2, April 2007

Modeling Mixed Traffic Flow at Crosswalks in MicroSimulations Using Cellular Automata*

ZHANG Yi ( ), DUAN Houli (), ZHANG Yi ( )**
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract: The cellular automata (CA) micro-simulation model was used to describe the behavior of the
mixed traffic flows at crosswalks where the pedestrians compete with the vehicles to cross the roadway. The
focus of this paper is the behavior of pedestrians and the influence of pedestrians behavior on the vehicle
flow, pedestrian flows, and the vehicle waiting time. The proportion of pedestrians who do not obey traffic
laws, the group effect, and expected waiting time of pedestrians, regarded as the most important pedestrian
characteristics, are taken into consideration in the analysis. Simulation results show the ability of the microsimulation to capture the most important features of mixed traffic flow.
Key words: cellular automata; mixed traffic flow; micro-simulation

Introduction
In the past several years, traffic micro-simulations
based on one-dimensional cellular automata (CA) have
been widely used because of their unique advantages
to describe the complexity of city traffic[1,2]. This simple algorithm, which can be easily adapted for parallel
computing, has easily-modified parameters which can
be used to model different traffic conditions. The algorithm is suitable to large scale computer simulations
which yield statistical results that can be easily compared with macro data for real conditions.
In 1992, Nagel and Schreckenberg[3] proposed a
one-dimensional cellular automata model to simulate
traffic flow on a freeway, providing the basic principles for more complex surroundings such as city traffic
flow. Improvements have been made to the N-S
Received: 2006-10-01; revised: 2006-12-05

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China

(No. 60374059), the National Key Basic Research and Development (973) Program of China (No. 2006CB705500), and the National High-Tech Research and Development Program (863) of
China (Nos. 2006AA11Z208 and 2006AA11Z229)

To whom correspondence should be addressed.

E-mail: zhyi@tsinghua.edu.cn

(Nagel-Schreckenberg) model to adapt it to more realistic circumstances, including the additional slow-tostart rule and the extension from single lane to multilane models[4-7]. Other scholars have used the CA
model to simulate pedestrian flow with a variety of results. Blue et al.[8] proposed a pedestrian movement
model for large scale open areas. Muramastu et al.[9]
developed a pedestrian movement model based on stochastic processes. Blue and Adler[10] then developed a
four-directional pedestrian crosswalk model and a year
later proposed a bi-directional pedestrian crosswalk
model[11].
Most of these literatures have focused on the interactions between vehicles and other vehicles, or between
pedestrians and other pedestrians, while the interactions between vehicles and pedestrians have been
rarely discussed. However, in many cities in China,
large numbers of pedestrians compete with vehicles to
cross crosswalks. When the traffic light is not reasonably configured, a serious traffic chaos occurs leading to
a notable decline in transit efficiency and traffic
safety[12].
This paper describes a mixed traffic flow model
based on cellular automata to analyze the characteristics of mixed traffic flow at crosswalks mainly

ZHANG Yi ( ) et alModeling Mixed Traffic Flow at Crosswalks in Micro-Simulations

composed of vehicle and pedestrian flows. The microsimulation model consists of three sub-models. The
vehicle sub-model simulates the vehicle flow based on
the N-S model; the pedestrian sub-model simulates the
pedestrian flow at the crosswalk; and the interaction
model describes the interactions between the vehicles
and the pedestrians at the crosswalk. The simulations
of the interactions between the vehicles and pedestrians are used to analyze the influence of these interactions on the traffic capacity and efficiency. The simulation results can be used to develop better traffic management strategies for mixed traffic conditions to increase safety, enhance efficiency, and avoid congestion.

Modeling the Crosswalk System

Typically, a crosswalk is a portion of a roadway where

pedestrians are permitted to cross the roadway. A typical crosswalk system which is not at an intersection is
shown in Fig. 1. This system is composed of two lanes
in opposite directions and the middle walkway. The
lanes are denoted by Lane 1 and Lane 2. The crosswalk
lies in the middle of a block and is perpendicular to the
road. Traffic lights are set to control the pedestrian and
vehicle flows at the crosswalk. When both the pedestrians and vehicles comply with the traffic laws, there
will be no interactions between the pedestrians and the
vehicles. However, when either does not obey the
lights, a mixed traffic flow will form.

Fig. 1 Typical crosswalk system

1.1

Vehicle sub-model

The vehicle sub-model is used to simulate the behavior

of the vehicles in Lanes 1 and 2. Each Lane is considered to be a one-dimensional discrete cell chain of
length L and each cell can only be empty or occupied
by one car. Generally, each cell is set to 4.5 m, which is
the average length of one car plus its headway in heavy
traffic conditions. Open-boundary[13] conditions are
used for the two lanes. The simulation is initialized by
randomly generating a car with a probability pveh
in each driveway at each time step. Generally, the

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probability pveh can be considered to be the vehicle

density.
Let xn and vn denote the position and velocity of
the n-th car. Assume that all cars have the same
maximum speed vmax . Then d n =xn +1 xn denotes the

distance between the n-th and the ( n + 1 )-th cars.

When the time iterates from t to t + 1 , the states of all
the cells are updated in parallel according to the rules
of the following one-dimensional N-S model[3].
The update rules consist of four steps[3].
(1) Acceleration: All the drivers tend to drive as fast
as possible, within the maximum speed limit, i.e.,
vn 6 min (vn + 1, vmax ).
(2) Deceleration: Since overtaking is not allowed in
a single-lane roadway, the speed of each car is restricted by the car ahead, i.e., vn 6 min (vn , d n 1) .
(3) Randomization: Let vn 6 max (vn 1,0) with
a probability prand . This step represents the occasional
overreaction of a driver who decelerates with a certain
probability.
(4) Vehicle movement: At t + 1 , the car positions
are updated according to Steps (1)-(3).
1.2

Bi-directional pedestrian cellular sub-model

The bi-directional pedestrian cellular sub-model is

used to simulate the behavior of the pedestrians at the
crosswalk. According to the model developed by Blue
et al.[8], each cell is denoted by a 1 1 square. The
width and length of the crosswalk are denoted by W
and G. Thus, the crosswalk can be modeled as a
W G grid with each cell being an automata. Then
each automata can be denoted by L(i, j ), where
1 i W and 1 j G . This sub-model uses
open boundary conditions. The pedestrians at both
ends of the crosswalk are generated according to a
Bernoulli distribution with one pedestrian generated
with a probability pveh at each time step. Each pedestrian walks towards the other side of the crosswalk.
The positions and velocities of the pedestrians are updated according to the rules in the bi-directional pedestrian model developed by Blue and Adler[11]. This
model utilizes a parallel evolution method which
avoids the independence problems among individuals
caused by the traditional serial time step evolution
method. The key rules governing switching between
cells are listed below[11].

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216

(1) Eliminate conflicts: Two walkers that are laterally adjacent may not sidestep into each other. An
empty cell between two walkers is available to one of
them with a 50/50 random assignment.
(2) For each pedestrian, the same or adjacent lane
which best advances forward movement up to the
maximum speed is selected. This gap is calculated by a
sub-procedure.
(3) To evade a pedestrian coming in the opposite direction, each pedestrian may choose to step laterally.
(4) If movement to overtake the walker ahead of you
with a lower speed is interrupted by a walker in the
opposite direction, then the pedestrian will choose to
step behind the walker going in the same direction.
(5) The probability to change lane is defined as:
Each of two adjacent walkways has a 50% probability
that they will change lanes. If none of the directions
are precluded, then the probability is 80/10/10

(forward/side/side). If one walkway is unavailable,

then the probability is 80/20 (forward/side).
1.3

Interaction sub-model

The interaction sub-model is the most important submodel for describing the interactions between vehicles
and pedestrians at the crosswalks. Generally, in urban
areas, pedestrian behavior is always more aggressive
than the vehicles, which means that vehicles always
decelerate voluntarily before the stop lines to avoid
conflicts with pedestrians while pedestrians always
cross the street as soon as possible when they feel the
situation is safe. To describe these characteristics, the
model mainly focuses on the pedestrian behavior, including the possibility that pedestrians will not abide
by the traffic laws and the group effect of the pedestrians. The basic rules are shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 Interaction sub-model

(1) Let d n denote the distance between the n-th

vehicle and the crosswalk. If the red light is on and the
speed of the n-th vehicle is greater than d n , then the
vehicle decelerates, i.e., vn 6 min (vn , d n 1) . After
this vehicle passes the crosswalk, the distance d n is
set to infinity.
(2) If there are pedestrians in the crosswalk and the
vehicle speed is greater than d n , then the vehicle

decelerates, i.e., vn 6 min (vn , d n 1).

(3) Pedestrians who disobey the traffic laws, called
riskers in this paper, are generated with a certain probability. When the pedestrian light is in red, normal pedestrians choose to wait, while riskers take a risk to end
ND
ter the crosswalk if min n <
+ R , where
vp
vn
vp is the pedestrian speed, is a proportional factor,

ZHANG Yi ( ) et alModeling Mixed Traffic Flow at Crosswalks in Micro-Simulations

and R is the time allowance.

(4) For the group effect, if more than 3 pedestrians
choose risk crossing the road, then the other pedestrians will follow them with a large probability pgroup . In
this simulation, pgroup was fixed at 0.9.
(5) If one pedestrian has waited for more than a long
time, he will choose to take a risk crossing the street
rather than waiting with a large probability prisk , which
can be considered to be a proportion of the riskers.

Simulation Results and Analysis

The parameter settings for the simulation were that:

each driveway had 400 cells so that the length of the
corresponding real-world path was 1.8 km. The cell
size for one pedestrian is 0.5 m 0.5 m. The crosswalk
area is 6 14 cells for a real site of 3 m 7 m. The
maximum vehicle speed on the road was set as 3 which
is equivalent to 48.6 km/h. The maximum pedestrian
speed was also 3 which is equivalent to 1.5 m/s. The
simulation time step t was set to 1 s. The total length of
the simulation is 13 600 time steps, which is 13 600 s.
One-hour data was collected after 10 000 time steps to
reduce random effects. The simulations were run for 10
times with the mean of the ten simulation results used
as the final results.
The interactions between the pedestrians and vehicles were quantified by using the vehicle flow in the
simulation period as the index for the traffic capacity,
with the average waiting time of the vehicles and the
pedestrians taken as indices of the service ability. The
influence of the probability pped (the pedestrian arrival rate), the proportion of riskers, and the light timing
on the traffic capacity and service were examined in
the tests.
2.1

Influence of pedestrian volume

Generally, the pedestrian volume at a crosswalk is one

of the most important factors affecting the traffic
capacity. The influence of pedestrian volume was investigated given the proportion of riskers prisk as 0.3
and the traffic light period as 120 s with a split 2/3.
Figure 3a shows the vehicle flow for different pped
as functions of pveh . The saturation phenomenon can
be seen to appear as pped increases. When pped is

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small, the vehicle flow rate increases linearly; however,

as pped increases, the slope of the curve decreases and
even reaches zero when pped is quite large (e.g.,
pped =0.5).
Figure 3b shows how the normalized vehicle flow
rate changes as the probability pped increases. The
normalized vehicle flow rate is defined as
Q( pped )
QN =
Q( pped = 0)

(1)

where Q( pped ) is the vehicle flow rate as a function

of pped and pped = 0.5 means there are no pedestrians generated. The normalized vehicle flow rate can be
used to evaluate how vehicle flow rate changes due to
the influence of pedestrians in the crosswalk. When
pveh is relatively small (less than 0.4 in Fig. 3b), there
are no drastic changes in the normalized vehicle flow
rate, which means that the pedestrians have little influence on the vehicle flow when the vehicle volume is
relatively small. However, when pped is larger than
0.6, the normalized vehicle flow will drastically decrease for pped 0.7 .
The probability pped = 0.7 is the turning point of the
normalized vehicle flow curves for pveh = 0.6 and
pveh = 0.8. Before the turning point, the normalized vehicle flow rates fluctuate slightly around 1, but they
decrease rapidly after the turning point, which implies that when the probability pped is larger than the
turning point, the pedestrians become a very important
factor influencing the traffic capacity and efficiency.
Other measures such as underground passages and pedestrian bridges should then be used to reduce the conflicts and increase the traffic flow rate.
The average vehicle and pedestrian waiting times as
functions of pped are shown in Figs. 3c and 3d. The
average vehicle waiting time with pped < 0.8 is less
than 100 s before the turning point ( pped = 0.7), but
rapidly increases several times after the turning point
(the average waiting time reaches almost 700 s for
pped =0.9, leading to heavy traffic congestion). This
further demonstrates the necessity of measures to enable pedestrians to cross the street without blocking traffic when the pedestrian volume increases greatly.

Tsinghua Science and Technology, April 2007, 12(2): 214-222

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Fig. 3 Effect of pedestrian volume on traffic flow characteristics

In Fig. 3d, the average pedestrian waiting time

curves have very similar shapes for the various vehicle
probabilities pveh (greater than 0.5), which means

linearly, which implies that the riskers have little influence on the vehicle flow. However, Fig. 4b for a larger
pedestrian volume ( pped = 0.8 ) shows that saturation

that the vehicle flow has only a small influence on the

pedestrian flow. This result can be explained from the
interaction sub-model which gives pedestrians larger
priority when they are conflicting with vehicles at the
crosswalk so that the vehicles have to decelerate before
the stop line to avoid the conflict with them. Therefore,
the pedestrians stop the vehicle flow rather than being
on the road at the same time as the vehicles.

appears very early (with the vehicle flow rate no longer

increasing above pveh = 0.1 when prisk = 0.8 or 0.9).

2.2

Influence of risker proportion

Riskers are pedestrians who do not obey the traffic laws

(e.g., cross the street against the red light). For these
simulations, pped was set to 0.8 or 0.5, the distribution
of riskers followed a binomial distribution, and the traffic light period was set to 120 s with a split 2/3.
Figure 4a shows that the vehicle flow rate for a relatively small pedestrian volume ( pped =0.6) increases

Therefore, the riskers strongly affect the traffic capacity and efficiency in crowded areas, so policies are
needed to restrict the behaviors of those riskers. For
example, a pedestrian bridge may be required.
The average vehicle and pedestrian waiting time for
these conditions are shown in Figs. 4c and 4d. In Fig. 4c,
when pped is 0.5, the average vehicle waiting time is
less than 200 s. However, when pped is 0.8, the waiting
time increases to more than 1000 s, indicating heavy traffic congestion. This also demonstrates the significance
of restricting the behavior of riskers in crowded areas.
The results in Fig. 4d show that the average pedestrian waiting time curves are very similar for different
pveh . This again shows that the pedestrians have
higher priorities than vehicles, so their behavior is not

ZHANG Yi ( ) et alModeling Mixed Traffic Flow at Crosswalks in Micro-Simulations

219

Fig. 4 Effect of risker proportion on traffic flow characteristics

strongly affected by the vehicles in this model. The

main factor affecting the average pedestrian waiting
time is the pedestrian arrival probability pped . In
Fig. 4d, the curves with the same pedestrian arrival
probability have almost the same shapes, while those
with different pped differ (e.g., the average pedestrian
waiting time with pped = 0.5 is much less than that
with pped = 0.8). Therefore, only the pedestrians

small (e.g., Tred = 0 s, 10 s, or 20 s), the vehicle flow

gradually increases linearly until the saturation appears
for longer red light phases of 40 s, 60 s, or 80 s. Furthermore, the saturation phenomenon appears quite
suddenly. For example, when Tred is 60 s, the vehicle
flow rate keeps increasing linearly to a turning point
pveh = 0.6 with the flow completely saturated and no
longer increasing for pveh 0.6 . The saturation phe-

themselves influence their average waiting times in the

interaction sub-model.

nomenon is important for traffic regulators when designing traffic control strategies. For instance, for traffic conditions similar to the model with pveh = 0.6,

2.3

pped = 0.6, and prisk = 0.3, the traffic control strategy

Influence of traffic light timing

The influence of the traffic light split on the traffic capacity and how efficiency was investigated for pedestrians generated with probability pped = 0.8 or 0.5,
riskers generated with probability prisk = 0.3, and the
traffic light period set to 120 s.
Figure 5a shows the vehicle flow rate for various red
light phases. When the red light phase is relatively

should avoid vehicle flows becoming saturated as in

Fig. 5a, which means that the length of the red light
phase should be less than 60 s.
Figure 5b shows how the normalized vehicle flow
rate changes as the red light phase increases. In this
case, the normalized vehicle flow is defined as
QN = Q(Tred ) / Q(Tred = 0) to illustrate how the vehicle
flow changes relative to the condition with no traffic

Tsinghua Science and Technology, April 2007, 12(2): 214-222

220

light at the crosswalk. When there are not many vehicles on the road ( pveh = 0.1 and 0.3 ), the normalized

traffic light. However, the flow rate linearly decreases

as a function of Tred for heavy traffic conditions (e.g.,

vehicle flow rate keeps fluctuating around 1, implying

that the vehicle flow will be similar to that without a

pveh = 0.7 and 0.9).

Fig. 5 Effect of traffic light timing on traffic characteristics

Figures 5c and 5d show the effect of the red light timing on the average vehicle and pedestrian waiting time.
The average vehicle waiting time increases if the light is
red too long; whereas the average pedestrian waiting
time decreases linearly as Tred increases, which is the
reason for adding a traffic light at the crosswalk: to reduce the average pedestrian waiting time at the crosswalks and facilitate pedestrians crossing the streets.
2.4

Spatiotemporal maps

The spatiotemporal maps were based on a traffic flow

density 0.9, proportion of the riskers prisk = 0.3 , and a
traffic light period of 120 s with a split of 5/6. Parts of
the spatiotemporal maps for one lane are shown in Figs.
6a and 6b. The pedestrians were generated with pped =
0.5 in Fig. 6a with pped = 0.8 in Fig. 6b.

The abscissa in Fig. 6 denotes the spatial position, i.e.,

the position of the cells in the lane, while the ordinate
denotes the simulation time step. Black points in Fig. 6
denote vehicles while white points represent blank
spaces. The traffic light is at location 200 m on the abscissa and the traffic is moving left to right. In the spatiotemporal map, the red light leads to a line of waiting
vehicles in front of the crosswalk, which evolves with
time as the black area in the map. The blank area behind
the crosswalk is the vacant area behind the red light
which evolves with time. Far from the crosswalk, the
vehicle density tends to be sparse and stable. Comparison of Figs. 6a and 6b shows how the map characteristics change with the probability pped . In Fig. 6a, the
blocked vehicles are all released during the green light
phase. However, in Fig. 6b, the blocked vehicles continue to line up which leads to a large traffic jam.

ZHANG Yi ( ) et alModeling Mixed Traffic Flow at Crosswalks in Micro-Simulations

221

Fig. 6 Spatiotemporal maps for a probability

An interesting case occurs when pped = 0.6 where

the spatiotemporal maps show an unstable traffic as
shown in Fig. 7. Before 9300 time steps, there is no
traffic jam in front of the crosswalk; however, after
9300 time steps, a traffic jam forms (Fig. 7a). In Fig.

7b, traffic jam exists throughout the whole 600 time

steps. Both Figs. 7a and 7b illustrate that when pped =
0.6, the traffic phase cannot remain stable, and might
be easily influenced by some subtle factors.

Fig. 7 Spatiotemporal maps for pped= 0.6

Conclusions

This paper described a pedestrian cross-street model

under the traffic light control based on cellular automata. Because the cellular automata properties describing the behaviors of vehicles and pedestrians differ, the
cross-street model was divided into three sub-models
with a vehicle sub-model to describe the vehicle behavior, a pedestrian sub-model to describe the pedestrian behavior, and an interaction sub-model to describe the interactions and conflicts between vehicles
and pedestrians. The simulation was run with a variety
of vehicle and pedestrian parameters to study the influence of interactions between vehicles and pedestrians
on the traffic capacity.
Analysis of the influence of pedestrian flow on the

vehicle flow shows that underground passages and

overhead pedestrian bridges are required when the pedestrian density reaches large values that depend on the
vehicle flow rate. The proportion of riskers, pedestrians who violate the traffic laws (such as crossing the
street against red light phase) also strongly influences
the traffic flow. The results show that the riskers are a
very negative factor influencing the traffic capacity but
that the total pedestrian volume is the most important
factor influencing the capacity of mixed traffic at
crosswalks. Finally, the results show that reasonable
signal timing, in which the length of the red light phase
for vehicles is not longer than the turning point (to
avoid saturation), allows the best traffic flow for both
vehicles and pedestrians.
Though the simulations were not validated for real

Tsinghua Science and Technology, April 2007, 12(2): 214-222

222

world conditions, the results show that they accurately

described mixed traffic flow problems at crosswalks
with traffic lights. The spatiotemporal maps show the
typical characteristics of mixed traffic flow at crosswalks with sloped vehicles being released during the
green light when the pedestrian volume is relatively
small but a traffic jam developing when the pedestrian
volume is quite large.

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Tsinghua President Gu Binglin Attends World Economic

Forums Global University Leaders Forum
Tsinghua President Gu Binglin attended the World Economic Forums Global University Leaders Forum (GULF)
held in Davos, Switzerland on January 26 and 27, 2007.
The summit featured discussions among world university leaders on such topics as the cultivation of international talent, strategies for university globalization, and challenges to global institutional governance. President Gu
spoke outlined Tsinghuas plan for talent cultivation at the summit and emphasized the importance of education in
solving world problems. Over twenty university leaders attended the meeting.

From http://news.tsinghua.edu.cn, 2007-02-01