Estimation of pedestrian walking speeds at controlled cross walks in Sri Lanka - a pilot study

Abstract

This study aims to develop and test a methodology to extract pedestrian speed data from video footage and to find the pedestrian walking speed Sri Lankans. This study was done in the premises of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna. Pedestrians were walking across a measured length was videotaped and the resulting footage was analysed after breaking the footage into frames. For each pedestrian walking event sex of the subject and the starting and ending clock times were recorded. Results showed that sex of the pedestrian did not have a significant effect on the walking speed of the pedestrians. Further, results showed that test subjects walked with a 15th percentile speed of 1.20 m/s. This walking speed is as par with the USA walking speed and faster than the Singaporeans’ walking speed when compared with the speeds reported in the previous studies. However it is noted that this walking speed may go down if we include more test subjects from elderly age category.