Discussion on Humanistic Design of Intersection Curb Radius Based on Passenger Experience

Abstract

The huge waste of urban road resources caused by large turning radii of intersections has become a universal concern in traffic engineering. Here, an approach for determining curb radius at intersections is proposed using lateral acceleration to reflect ride perceptions, bringing human-oriented concepts into urban intersection design. First, we classified three kinds of ride perceptions into comfortable/uncomfortable but acceptable/unacceptable, after which the lateral acceleration and ride perceptions were obtained by ride perception experiments. The lateral acceleration critical values for each ride perception were obtained using the Raff critical gap method. Finally, we calculated the intersection curb radius based on the critical values, and verified vehicle safety under the recommended intersection curb radius. The results showed that the intersection curb radius based on the proposed approach was less than the specified value and safety was verified, indicating that enormous land resources could be saved were this methodology applied to intersection design.