Pedestrian Preferences with Respect to Roundabouts

44 Attention to user behavior and preferences has been a helpful tool in improving road safety and 45 accident prevention in recent years. At the same time, there remain some important areas of road 46 safety and accident prevention for which user preferences have not been explored. For instance, 47 so far, road safety research has not addressed pedestrian and vulnerable user preferences with 48 respect to roundabouts, despite the increasing construction of these intersections around the 49 world. The present research stems from the fact that studies related to roundabout safety have 50 typically put drivers in a privileged position, while generally overlooking the importance of 51 safety as it relates to vulnerable users, especially pedestrians. Moreover, it handles this particular 52 issue through an approach that has not been used so far: the Stated Preference (SP) survey. 53 As such, this paper describes the justification for, the methodology, the analysis and 54 conclusions of a SP survey designed to obtain pedestrian and vulnerable user preferences with 55 respect to roundabout facilities in Quebec. In addition to the fact that an SP survey has not been 56 used in this context before, another innovative facet of the work lies in the use of traffic micro57 simulation software to create videos that serve as alternatives in Choice Tasks in the SP survey. 58 The study finds that pedestrian preferences for roundabouts are affected by: the presence of 59 pedestrian crossings (and their location relative to the roundabout), signage and pedestrian 60 islands, as well as the number of traffic lanes they must cross. In addition to these design 61 features, pedestrian preferences for roundabouts are also affected by the speed and volume of 62 traffic – something we were able to evaluate thanks to the use of traffic simulation videos. 63 64