Pedestrian crossing characteristics are important for the design of signalized urban intersections and signalized crossings. There are many different factors that affect pedestrians flow at these locations such as cycle and green times, width of the roads, time headway of vehicles and pedestrians. The optimum cycle time is frequently calculated by minimizing the user delays at an intersection, while users are defined as vehicles and pedestrians. Through statistical distribution models, prediction for crossing opportunity with minimal amount of information is possible. Therefore, statistical distributions with a certain degree of randomness can be used to model vehicle and pedestrian flow, effectively. If the delay or average waiting time is extremely long, the pedestrians’ likelihood of violating the signal, increases.
The aim of this study is to determine the distribution of pedestrian arrival headways at signalized intersections and calculate the pedestrian average waiting time (delay) which affects the green time. Field study was conducted at six intersections where pedestrian flows were low, moderate and high in Istanbul. Chi-squared and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to investigate and determine the distribution of pedestrians’ arrival headways. It is found that Gamma distribution is the best-fitted distribution for pedestrian arrival headway.