Calibration of Pedestrian Simulation Model for Signalized Crosswalk in Hong Kong

This paper presents the calibration of a pedestrian simulation model for simulating pedestrian movements at a selected signalized crosswalk in Hong Kong. This model is able to estimate the variations of walking speed particularly under conditions with bi-directional pedestrian flows. A simulation software package, Service Model, was adopted to develop the pedestrian simulation model for the selected signalized crosswalk. The simulation results gained in this study includes pedestrian flows on the selected crosswalk, walking times on the different measurement section of the crosswalk and waiting times at the waiting areas. A comparison was made between the simulated results and the observed data. It is found that the comparison results were satisfactory. Therefore, it is believed that the calibrated pedestrian simulation model for signalized crosswalk can be used for improvement of the pedestrian environment particularly under conditions of heavy opposing pedestrian flows. The model can be applied to assess the effects of bi-directional pedestrian flows and to evaluate the benefits of this effects in practice.