Dynamic features of pedestrian-vehicle counter flow conflicts

Rapid urbanization features dense vehicular and pedestrian traffic in urban core, which results in more and more traffic efficiency and safety problems. In this article, we adopt an extended finite-grid cellular automaton model to study the dynamic features of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts. The vehicle in our model is mainly hindered by the pedestrians in front of it, while the pedestrians will react according to different daily accustomed traffic behaviors, i.e., acceleration to avoid collision, right moving preference, and choice maintain when it is costly to cross the road, in different regions of the road. Results of numerical simulations show that the presence of vehicles has made the mixed traffic system unstable and increases the probability of transiting from free flow to perfect stop. A stochastic meta-stable state along with a probabilistic nature is found between the free flow and the perfect stop phase. © 2011 ASCE.