Red light crossing, crossing time and attitudes to crossing with intelligent green light for pedestrians

In order to increase mobility and promote modal shift to walking, intersections in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, have been equipped with intelligent management of green light for pedestrians. This allows adjustment of green time based on radar detection of pedestrians in the crossing and prolongation of the green time for the pedestrians if required. The effect is examined in a before/after study of a two-stage pedestrian crossing with a centre refuge island in an intersection of four-lane roads. The data consists of responses from an on-site questionnaire including 72+53 individuals and 266+318 hours of video registration of the pedestrian crossing in the before and after study, respectively. The study includes the pedestrians' experiences, the measured time of crossing and the share of pedestrians crossing at red light. The analyses of video recordings are carried out with the video analysing software RUBA. The share of pedestrians who often or frequently only reached the refuge island before red light decreased from 42% to 13%. Video data show that the pedestrians reduced their crossing at red light from 44% to 16% in the remote lane, while the percentage remained virtually unchanged on the closest lane with 16%. The mean crossing time was also reduced by 5 and 6 seconds in- and outside of the peak hour period, respectively. The reductions in mean crossing time were not statistically significant.