Walking in Waterloo Region

[Pheidippides]

I've often wondered about the model the region uses to evaluate intersection safety. According to the annual collision report they use the Highway Safety Manual model which appears to be used widely in North America. I blindly am assumed it has been validated and tested over the years to ensure that it is valid in our jurisdiction and is free of biases that might not apply in our context, etc., but based on Dan's comments perhaps that is too much to expect?

According to the 2016 collision report there were 9 collisions involving pedestrians at King and University over the previous 5 year period or 1.8 per year when the model predicts 0.3 per year based an intersection of this type, with its features, with that volume of vehicles (47,507 AADT), etc. That report also suggests that the average annual excess social costs per year of this intersection alone are $91,840.81 which could buy you a lot of paint, reprogrammed signals, and temporary bulb-outs (curb extensions) for even just a trial of measures.

Also, this record article indicates an average of 6,000 pedestrians used the intersection per day in 2013. That works out to be 250 per hour or 6.3 per 90 second traffic signal cycle (across a 24 hour day) or 333 per hour or 8.3 per 90 second traffic signal cycle (across an 18 hour day).

Or in other words, there are about 0.8 collisions involving pedestrians per 1 million pedestrian crossings.

Here are the relevant traffic volumes from 2015:
22,010 KING ST N (Regional Road 15) BTWN Hickory & UNIVERSITY
47,507 KING ST (Regional Road 15) AT UNIVERSITY AVE
15,537 KING ST N (Regional Road 15) BTWN UNIVERSITY & S to Signals(WLU)
 
22,508 UNIVERSITY AVE W (Regional Road 57) BTWN KING & Maple Ct
47,507 UNIVERSITY AVE (Regional Road 57) AT KING ST
26,307 UNIVERSITY AVE E (Regional Road 57) BTWN KING & Regina