A Brief Description of the Test Median

Together with the Department of Public Works, Macalester College planned a test median last winter and implemented the two-phase test in the spring, 2003.

Prior to the implementation of the test, Macalester’s design and engineering consultants conducted studies including traffic counts, pedestrian counts & behavior and traffic speed analysis to establish data for the Pretest Conditions.

Phase I of the test was conducted in the first half of April. It was primarily designed to measure the impacts of a mid-block crosswalk for pedestrians. In order to prevent any other crossings along the street, a chain-link fence was erected to channel all pedestrians to either the mid-block crosswalk or to the crosswalks at the corners. Generally, both pedestrians and drivers expressed frustration during Phase I. Pedestrians did not like the barricade created by the fences and drivers did not like the congestion and back ups created by giving pedestrians the right-of-way.

Phase II of the test began in mid-April and continued through the end of spring semester or the third week of May. Phase II tested a two-stage crossing at three "crossing-points" but included no formal crosswalk. Instead, this phase gave pedestrians a raised median as a safe refuge on which to wait and facilitated crossing one lane of traffic at a time. Except at the corners, vehicles had the right-of-way throughout this phase of the test. Dispersing the pedestrian traffic over three points, giving pedestrians a place to wait between east and westbound traffic and maintaining vehicular right-of way made for much less of the kind of congestion observed in Phase I.

Throughout each phase, information on traffic counts, speeds, pedestrian and driver behaviors, and pedestrian crossings was collected. Video was taken of the pretest conditions, Phase I and Phase II. However, we did not learn any more from the video footage than we did from onsite observations. In fact, onsite observation allowed us to observe the entire context of each interaction between drivers and pedestrians whereas the video gave a more limited scope of observation. There was also some technical difficulty that ruined the video footage of Phase II conditions.

Table 1 below shows vehicle counts and pedestrian counts during three peak periods of the day:

TABLE 1*

Table 2 shows the average speeds pretest and during various phases:

TABLE 2*

*Test data collected by the City of Saint Paul, Department of Public Works, Pretest data collected by LSA Design and SEH

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