ISLAND CONSTRUCTION AT UNSIGNALIZED CROSSING ON STATION ROAD AND PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICLE BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

There has been concern for some time about declining safety at the Kasukabe Station Road (Prefectural Road 400) linking the east exit of Kasukabe Station of the Tobu Isesaki Railway Line in Kasukabe City, Saitama, and the Saitama-Kasukabe Road (Prefectural Road 2) partly because there are many pedestrians who use an unsignalized crossing on a high-traffic road and partly because there are many pedestrians and bicyclists who cross non-crosswalk areas. To improve traffic safety at the un-signalized crossing, therefore, a two-stage crossing featuring a mid-roadway pedestrian island was constructed (completed in July, 2017). This paper briefly describes the Prefectural Road 400 pedestrian island project and reports on structural characteristics of the island. Videos were shot of the crossing before and after the construction of the pedestrian island to analyze the crossing behaviors of pedestrians, behaviors of vehicles passing the crossing and safety of crossing pedestrians and bicyclists before and after the island construction. This paper also reports the analysis results thus obtained.