pelican pedestrian crossings design are the most common light-controlled pedestrian crossing type, particularly in the UK and Crown Dependencies. Despite their popularity, they are not without problems. They have been found to cause unnecessary stress to pedestrians who push the button but do not cross before the flashing green man / flashing amber stage, and they can cause excessive delays for vehicles when they are allowed to move at the lights even though a pedestrian is still on the island.

Crossing with Confidence: Designing Effective Zebra Crossings for Urban Safety

Pedestrians who are older or slower for some reason do not always know whether they can get across during the flashing green man / flashing yellow amber phase, and they may feel a risk of falling while crossing the road. In order to address this problem, we propose an intelligent pelican crossing system using the adaptive time arrangement based on age prediction of the pedestrians, which can reduce the stress and inconvenience caused by the existing traffic signals.

A pedestrian is predicted to be either a child (5 years or under) or an adult (over 50 years). The smart signal system will adjust the traffic light green man time according to the prediction, allowing the older and slowest pedestrians to cross during the flashing green man phase. This will also reduce the delay to vehicles, and make the signal more responsive to the needs of pedestrians.

The intelligent crossing system is based on the TRL signal control operating system MOVA and the pedestrian detection systems VSPD (Volume Sensitive Pedestrian Detection) and both forms of ADAPT (Adaptive Pedestrian Action). A calibrated VISSIM simulation model shows that this combination achieves a better performance than the MOVA Puffin alone, in terms of vehicle and pedestrian delays.