A critical review of Austroads Report AP-R621-20
Revised version published as Austroads Report AP-R647-21 “Management of Traffic Modelling Processes and Applications”
Public transport, bicycles and pedestrians as intersection model elements
The US Highway Capacity Manual gives a lot of emphasis to "multimodal analysis". The SIDRA software has extensive treatment of pedestrians, and includes bicycles, buses and trams / light rail in "vehicle movement classes". Intersection and network modellers require that these traffic system elements are included in analyses with increasing levels of interest.
Pedestrian crossings should never be excluded from signalised intersection analysis due to the critical impact of pedestrian minimum walk and clearance time requirements on signals.
Pedestrians and "persons" in SIDRA model
The following list of features are given here to indicate the extent of pedestrians in modelling intersections and networks in SIDRA:
- Modelling pedestrians at signalised intersections, signalised crossings, roundabouts, two-way sign control.
- Pedestrian zebra (unsignalised) crossings on slip lanes at intersections and at midblock locations.
- Staged, slip lane and diagonal crossings, and walk time extension at signalised intersections.
- Pedestrian movement and signal characteristics as input.
- Effect of pedestrians on capacity of vehicle movements at signalised and unsignalised intersections and midblock, including holding a red arrow for pedestrian protection at signalised intersections.
- Effect of pedestrians on intersection design and signal timing including pedestrian actuation effects.
- Pedestrian performance at signalised intersections (delay and queues).
- Output reports and displays for vehicles, pedestrians and persons.
In SIDRA, variabilities in pedestrian, bicycle, bus, tram/ light rail and train volumes and signal phases are treated via features such as modelling of pedestrian actuation and minor phase actuation, and user input of phase frequency. Scenario analysis can be used in cases such as infrequent bus priority, tram and train phases at signals.
The results for persons given in SIDRA output include the count of pedestrians, cyclists and people in cars, buses, trams, and so on according to vehicle occupancy characteristics, and optimum signal timings (for minimum delay, etc) are determined for persons not for vehicles.