Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Student Project

First Advisor

Cho, Kyu Taek

Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering| Department of Mathematical Sciences

Abstract

Scramble crosswalks differ from conventional crosswalks in their ability for pedestrians to cross diagonally. This research compares the average crossing times and investigates the walking behaviors that pedestrians adopt to produce the speediest times in the two crosswalk configurations. Identification of the most efficient set of walking behaviors is done through an agent-based model, whereas producing polynomials relating crossing times to the most prominent walking behaviors is done through regression algorithms in machine learning. With the combination of these two approaches, it is revealed that pedestrians must adopt a relaxed walking style to make each crosswalk configuration efficient. Additionally, between conventional and scramble crosswalks, the scramble configuration generally leads to lower crossing times, provided that there is sufficient pedestrian traffic. In all other cases, transitioning from a conventional to scramble design by the addition of diagonal routes leads to no significant changes – or even an increase – in crossing times.

Comments

The first version of the agent-based model covered in this project can be found in the CoMSES Computational Model Library: https://www.comses.net/codebases/6c2286dd-5a23-4658-bbb0-47af6c686f7b/releases/1.0.0/. This is not the version used to generate the content for this project, but it will be updated on CoMSES at most six months after the publication of the CURE Poster on Huskie Commons.

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

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