School Zone Road Safety: Evaluation & Redesign of Pedestrian facilities

Abstract

Urban accident statistics reveal a good number of school going children get hit every year while on their journey to and from the schools. School Zones are an area which almost every child traverses in his/her daily trip. School Zone also becomes a daily trip generating point for parents or adults accompanying the child. Child pedestrian safety in school zones are a cause of worry to various international organizations which could identify this pattern. Back in India, not much study has been carried out in this domain as of yet. This Dissertation attempts to understand the attributes responsible for pedestrian safety in school zones. Literature was studied to identify various such attributes that impact the child pedestrian safety within the school zones. Further, a study area comprising of 23 school zones was selected in South Delhi and studies were conducted to assess the current situation of child pedestrian safety at various school zone areas with the help of various surveys. Pedestrian perception survey was an important part of this research work wherein the perceptions of children, parents, school teachers and staff are recorded over the identified attributes. Pedestrian infrastructure inventory was recorded for all selected locations in the study area to assess the scenario of available or non-available pedestrian infrastructure. Further, Pedestrian volumes studies were carried out to understand the number and density of pedestrian footfall in various school zones. One school zone was selected to carry out detailed microscopic study through the use of simulation technique using PTV Vissim with Viswalk Module embedded. The school area was replicated in terms of geometry and road user input values. Few metrics were studied for performance. Some changes were made to the geometry keeping in mind the fact that the current situation was not ideal. Several modifications were made to the current geometry and studied again with the simulation technique. The results were then compared for the base scenario and the modified scenario to reveal the change in pedestrian behavior. Bases on literature and best practices being followed in different countries, several measures to enhance pedestrian safety experience were suggested in the recommendations chapter. The results reveal that at several places the basic pedestrian infrastructural facilities were missing. Further, the condition of sidewalks were either not adequate in space or not appropriate in terms of quality to easily walk on. The encroachments and on street parking chaos also added v | P a g e to the problem of pedestrians having lesser space to themselves. There was no coordination found between parents, school administration and local government bodies in terms of regulating the pedestrian traffic in these school areas. In fact, many of the adults were not even aware of the safe practices that should be practices for child pedestrian safety. The local enforcement agencies like municipal corporations and police had little interference in daily commute governance of these school areas. The lack of infrastructure and lack of awareness was only adding to the pedestrian safety concerns. Vehicular traffic management in these school zones was also identified as one of the concerns as there were no proper rules and regulations enforced in this regard. Vehicular speed management installations were present at several locations but then the enforcement was not being taken seriously. Many children travelled to school without adult supervision. There were no special zones designated for school drop off and pick up. Most schools had on the go drop off and pick up functioning amongst the vehicular traffic movement. Majority of schools were having no sidewalks, the ones that had sidewalks had no pedestrian guardrails which made the pedestrian sidewalk very vulnerable to the vehicular traffic adding to the chances of conflict between and pedestrian walking on the outer edge of the sidewalk and vehicular movement adjacent to the sidewalk. More than half of the schools did not have pedestrian crossing facility. Inadequate parking infrastructure, lack of vehicular speed management devices, poor road conditions, deteriorated sidewalk surfaces etc. were some of the issues faced by the pedestrians on a daily basis. Adding to it the sensitive requirements of the vulnerable road users like children who have slower response times as compared to adults. All such findings indicated towards massive scope of improvement to be carried out in various contexts if the pedestrian safety was to be enhanced in the school zone area. This dissertation hopes to throw light on to the study and hopes to contribute to the literature.