Countdown Signals for Pedestrians in Germany Prof. Dr.-Ing.

Klaus Schlabbach HafenCity Universitt Hamburg - Germany

1. INTRODUCTION Information in digital figures about the seconds left till the changing of the signal indication to RED is wide spread all over the world. Surprisingly their effects on the acceptance of the signal control are less researched. Many examples in China, Japan, Denmark, Ireland and Turkey have been realized without any research about their effectiveness. Furthermore there are a lot of installations especially in the United States and Canada (FHA/DOT, 2008) which provide pedestrians with the remaining seconds available before the pedestrian phase ends; in many cases they show only the time remaining to cross (Fahrraher, 2000). That is a great difference to the Hamburg experiment. Hamburg is with about 1,7 Mio inhabitants the second biggest town in Germany; nowadays the population density is 2,257 inhabitants/km 2. This seems a lot, but in former days it was much bigger. The origin of the town dates back to 8th century, but only when the harbor was founded in 1189 the development as an important trading center began. The economic growth culminated in the foundation of Hanse-Union 1230 in the Eastern Sea region. In spite of several wars and huge destructions Hamburg is still a focus point in Northern Europe transport infrastructure: the harbor is the number two in Europe (behind Rotterdam) and number eight in the world counting container transport units (TEU), two motorways crossing the river Elbe with 12 lanes as a whole carrying about 250.000 ADT and the mass transit system transports about 500 Mio people during one year. The road network is 3,937 km long and divided into 82 km of motorways and 149 km of federal roads; nearly half of the rest (1.750 km of 3.706 km) is regulated by speed limit areas (30 km/h). Referring to the latter, Hamburg is one of the first German towns having taken the initiative in 1984, which led to a modification of the traffic regulations five years later. The road density as a whole is 5,2 km/km2. At 1683 facilities signal control is installed, 66% at junctions and 34% as midblock crossings; as a whole 5,312 signalized crossings are placed at the pedestrians disposal. Car ownership is 478 cars per 1,000 inh abitants and rather low compared with other German towns of similar size. The modal split data are as follows: 22% pedestrians, 12% bicycles, 21% public transport and 45% motorized private transport. 2. THE HAMBURG EXPERIMENT In 2005 the local government voted for a pilot project to prove countdown signals the first time in Germany. In the first step a pedestrian crossing in the Central Business District was equiped with countdown RED signals for pedestrians (Celikkan et al., 2008).

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Figure 1: Hamburg Installation As a simplified test of effectiveness a before-and-after-study was carried out covering the following aspects: traffic volume of cars and pedestrians, delay and acceptance of the signals. The two pillar approach consists of a traffic engineering survey and roadside interviews. This is to make sure that we have data from two levels (objective by traffic counts and subjective by the questionnaires) interpreting the results. Due to the activities in the CBD (shopping, entertainment, work places) the research intervals were fixed to 11 a.m. 1 p.m./4-6 p.m. and 8-10 p.m. Altogether 45000 cars and 71000 pedestrians crossing the street had been recorded and 760 questionnaires had been evaluated. Behaviour in transport is embedded in the behaviour patterns of other social sectors. If the society is marked by growing individualism, self assertion, egoism and deregulation no one can be surprised to see similar attitudes in the traffic sector. That is why red-light offences by pedestrians and cyclists are widespread in Germany. Countdown signals have a significant influence on this misbehaviour (Table 1). Crossing direction Interval 11 a.m- 1 p.m. 4- 6 p.m. 8- 9 p.m. to the square before after 11.6 8.6 13.4 8.4 29.3 20.0 18.1 12.3 to the building before after 13.9 13.4 15.6 15.0 41.9 34.6 23.8 21.0

Table 1 - Redlight-running of pedestrians [%] As a whole (for both directions and all intervals) the redlight-running share dropped from 21.0% to 16.7% which means a reduction of 20%. This result is very remarkable, because we know inevitable basic values about 10% referring to unsaturated flows.

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The questionnaire showed first of all an increasing threshold value of the acceptable waiting times (Table 2). Threshold value 15 s 30 s 45 s 60 s 90 s 120 s without countdown signals 92 52 44 15 10 0 Table 2 - Acceptable delay (%), pedestrians One quarter of the sample stated a changed behaviour by the countdown signal which corresponds to the observed reduction of the redlight running. The public opinion differs a lot depending on age (Table 3) and sex (women agree more with the countdown signals). Age 18 19-30 31-60 > 60 very good 9 3 11 20 good 42 45 43 37 all the same 47 48 40 40 bad 2 4 6 3 100 79 78 37 22 0 with

Table 3 - Expressions of opinion about countdown signals (%) for the after period; pedestrians At least the participants rated the countdown signal as a whole (Table 4). Though 29% refused the additional help very strictly, there is a clear consent. exemplary worthy of imitation very interesting meaningless totally redundant 8 20 43 12 17

Table 4 - Final rating (%); pedestrians Due to the public opinion and the traffic engineering results, the government decided in the meantime to continue with the installation of pedestrian countdown signals. A cost-benefit analysis has not been done because the most important parameters (f. e. delay, accidents, journey times) keep unchanged by the countdown signals. But the results show clearly that countdown indications provide enhanced pedestrian convenience and can reduce the redlight-running of pedestrians.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Celikkan, Y., Hoffmann A. and Schlabbach K. (2008) Restrotanzeige fr Fugnger, Straenverkehrstechnik, 52 (1) 20-25. Fahrraher, B. A. B. (2000) Pedestrian Countdown Indication Market Research and Evaluation. ITE Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. Federal Highway Administration / US Department of Transportation (2008) Pedestrian Safety Report to Congress, Washington D.C.

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