Modelling Pedestrians' utilization of crossing facilities along urban streets

A pedestrian intending to cross roadway has to decide whether to uses crossing facility or to cross the street illegally or recklessly. An incorect decision will expose the pedestrian to risk of accident. Pedestrians are always characterized as the most vulnerable road users. Some scholars have studied the risk of crossing a road, laying an emphasis on walk trip frequency or mode choice behaviors. Quite differently, this research is one of the first to probe into, and model, the utilization of zebra crossings among pedestrians in Malaysia. The goal of this paper is to work on a sustainable pedestrian zebra crossing utilization index model taking guidance from the pedestrian and Zebra characteristics. The paper sheds new light on the Pedestrian' decision towards Zebra crossing, where pedestrian utilization decision of Zebra crossing served to optimize the result of a model created for utilisation choice behavior. Data from the observation done across 9 study locations along urban streets was collected, binary logit model (BLM) techniques were employed for result analyses. The results show that among the different variables, vehicle speed, pedestrian age and gender, and presence of baggage were discovered to be significant and had a direct effect on the probability of pedestrians' utilisation decision. It is anticipated that this study would improve the understanding of relevant parties, improve pedestrians' crossing behaviors, and lead to better pedestrians crossing behaviors.