title: Modeling level-of-safety for bus stops in China.
abstract: Safety performance at bus stops is generally evaluated by using historical traffic crash data or traffic conflict data. However, in China, it is quite difficult to obtain such data mainly due to the lack of traffic data management and organizational issues. In light of this, the primary objective of this study is to develop a quantitative approach to evaluate bus stop safety performance.
  
  
  
  The concept of level-of-safety for bus stops is introduced and corresponding models are proposed to quantify safety levels, which consider conflict points, traffic factors, geometric characteristics, traffic signs and markings, pavement conditions, and lighting conditions. Principal component analysis and k-means clustering methods were used to model and quantify safety levels for bus stops.
  
  
  
  A case study was conducted to show the applicability of the proposed model with data collected from 46 samples for the 7 most common types of bus stops in China, using 32 of the samples for modeling and 14 samples for illustration. Based on the case study, 6 levels of safety for bus stops were defined. Finally, a linear regression analysis between safety levels and the number of traffic conflicts showed that they had a strong relationship (R(2) value of 0.908).
  
  
  
  The results indicated that the method was well validated and could be practically used for the analysis and evaluation of bus stop safety in China. The proposed model was relatively easy to implement without the requirement of traffic crash data and/or traffic conflict data. In addition, with the proposed method, it was feasible to evaluate countermeasures to improve bus stop safety (e.g., exclusive bus lanes).
authors.affiliation: a Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.|b Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.
authors.forename: Zhirui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: a Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.|b Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: a Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.|b Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.
authors.forename: Yongbo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: a Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.|b Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.
authors.forename: Xiaomeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: a Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.|b Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, Southeast University , Nanjing , China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002681:China; D004779:Environment Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018986:Motor Vehicles; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012449:Safety
keywords: bus stop; level-of-safety; principal component analysis; k-means clustering; traffic conflict point