Abstract

This thesis studies the magnitude of pedestrian road collisions in public transit locations and addresses how the road and built-environment elements affect pedestrian safety at public transit access points (PTAPs). Collision count models and hotspot identification methods are utilized to address the research questions. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 provide an introduction and literature review over pedestrian road safety in general, and specifically in public transit locations. Chapter 3 explains the methodologies that will be utilized in this research study. Chapter 4 establishes a relationship between pedestrian-vehicle collision counts and public transit services. Pedestrian collisions occur more frequently at intersections with the presence of a PTAP and with a higher bus traffic volume, a higher number of bus routes, and a higher public transit accessibility index. Hence, Chapter 5, explores how road geometry and built environment elements affect pedestrian-vehicle collision counts at PTAPs. The analysis shows that strategies such as road narrowing, sidewalk width increase, median refuges, presence of signal’s walk interval, and vehicle stop signs could improve pedestrian safety at PTAPs. Moreover, pedestrians are at more risk in PTAP where there are roads with higher road grades and more two-way streets than one-way streets. Chapter 5 continues with Empirical Bayes collision hotspot identification and examines a couple of collision hotspots in PTAPs in the case study of Montreal City. The study findings point out the need to improve pedestrian road safety at PTAP locations and offer engineering countermeasures for addressing this problem.