Development of Canadian National Pedestrian Crossing Control Guide

In 2010 the Transportation Association of Canada began the 2-year process of updating the 1998 pedestrian crossing control manual. The resulting document, the Pedestrian Crossing Control Guide, is expected to promote uniformity across the country with respect to the approach used in the provision of pedestrian crossing control. This standardization is done through the development of a decision support tool to assist in the decision-making process when the need for pedestrian crossing control is established and in identification of the type of crossing control to use for the location's characteristics. The development of the new Pedestrian Crossing Control Guide for Canada is discussed, and findings of the research that led to its development are presented. The findings fall into two areas: existing Canadian and international pedestrian crossing control practices and safety performance of different pedestrian crossing control devices. Principal conclusions from this research are (a) international practice is changing toward providing guidance rather than formal, numerical warranting procedures in the decision-making process for the provision of pedestrian crossing control; (b) there are pedestrian crossing control treatments for which there is no available literature regarding safety performance, and the available literature for other treatments lacks rigorous safety evaluations; and (c) further research is needed regarding the safety performance of pedestrian crossing control devices, particularly in the areas of understanding pedestrian collisions and developing accident prediction models.