Classification and checking model of pedestrian crossing

• Main Authors: Luis Delgado Méndez, Consuelo del Moral Ávila, Ignacio Valverde Espinosa, Ignacio Valverde Palacios
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya 2012-11-01
• Series: Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
• Subjects: Accessibility, pedestrian crossing, classification, verification
• Online Access: http://www.jacces.org/index.php/jacces/article/view/64

The requirements demanded for pedestrian crossings, as the meeting point of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, are becoming more and more numerous and to guarantee that they are understandable, employable and feasible for all people in safe and convenient conditions, and in the most natural and autonomous manner(LEY 51, 2003). Natural stone is a highly demanded material used for covering and surface finishing of public external spaces.  However, complying with  the increasingly demanding requirements for  pedestrian crossings, makes using  natural stone much more difficult due to the inherent limitations that this material presents:  from the labour-intensive mechanical procedures required to modify its shape, (as it cannot be moulded), to the inability to change its properties by chemical addition. This situation has been the premise of this investigation, with the objective of establishing a verification model of the functionalities of the pedestrian crossing, in general, and in particular, a verification model which can be used for a pedestrian crossing built with natural stone. The result is a model that can be used for the verification of the functionalities of a pedestrian crossing. In the process of building this model, the functionalities had to be classified in order to systematize the own verification method by which this classification can be considered as a secondary result of the investigation, even though it was not the main object. After realizing this investigation it can be confirmed that the functionality of a pedestrian crossing depends on almost a hundred parameters which must be checked or measured, in turn proving that this design and construction process is indeed complex.