Estimating pedestrian delays at signalized intersections in developing cities by Monte Carlo method

This paper proposes a Monte Carlo model to estimate pedestrian delays at signalized intersections adopting pre-timed two-phase control in developing cities like Xi’an, China. In the model, the signal cycle is divided into a series of subphases, and each subphase lasts 1s. The model includes four parts: vehicle generator, pedestrian generator, pedestrian model, and statistical module. Vehicle generator is used to generate a vehicle sequence traversing the crosswalk. Pedestrian generator is used to generate a pedestrian sequence arriving at the crosswalk. Pedestrian model includes a set of rules pedestrians follow at signalized intersections. And statistical module calculates the average delay of pedestrians arriving during each subphase, and the overall average delay as well. Finally, field data collected from an intersection in Xi’an are used to validate the model, and the validation results indicate that the proposed model is able to estimate accurately the average delay of pedestrians arriving during each subphase.