695 CETRA 2022 11-13 May 2022, Pula, Croatia 7 th International Conferenceon Road and Rail Infrastructure ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF TRAFFIC INFRASTRUCTURE RECONSTRUCTION AND INTRODUCTION OF A PEDESTRIAN ISLAND AS A TRAFFIC CALMING MEASURE USING TRAFFIC MICROSIMULATIONS Irena Ištoka Otković 1 , Aleksandra Deluka-Tibljaš 2 , Sanja Šurdonja 2 , Tiziana Campisi 3 1 Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osiek, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture Osiek, Croatia 2 University of Rieka, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Croatia 3 Kore University of Enna, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Italy Abstract The reduction in the trafc death rate in the EU has stagnated in recent years, and the goal of halving the number of fatalities in trafc from 2010 to 2020 has not been met yet. The long- term goal of achieving “Vision 0” requires a multidisciplinary approach and shared respon- sibility between transport infrastructure that “forgives mistakes”, trafc regulation, vehicle automation and trafc participants. At pedestrian crossings of the local roads, which do not have trafc lights, reducing the speed of vehicles by applying a trafc sign has not proved to be an efective solution. Vehicle speed is proved to be a key parameter that determines the outcome of a vehicle-pedestrian confict. The pedestrian island spatially separates the opposite directions of vehicle fows, thus enabling a better perception of the confict zone, which is important for vulnerable trafc users. In this paper, an analysis of the efectiveness of horizontal discontinuities and pedestrian island, as infrastructural measures for trafc calming, was made. The evaluation was made using microsimulation trafc modeling, and the calibration of the model was made using a neural network based on measured feld data. Travel time is a trafc indicator used in the model calibration process. The calibrated model was then used for the analysis of the efects of the planned reconstruction of the road net- work segment near the children’s playground in a residential area in the city of Osiek, Croa- tia. Statistical analysis was done to determine whether vehicle speeds on the observed road network segment before and after reconstruction difer signifcantly. Applied methodology showed that the application of microsimulation trafc modeling provides a possibility to as- sess the efectiveness of the reconstruction of transport infrastructure in the planning phase Keywords: reconstruction assessment, pedestrian safety, vehicle speeds, trafc modeling, VISSIM 1 Introduction and research overview In the period from 2010 to 2020, the goal set by the EU to have the number of deaths in road accidents was not fully met, on average that number decreased by 37 %. The largest drop in the number of deaths and injuries occurred from 2019 to 2020, certainly as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is to be expected that the numbers will rise again after the end of the pandemic [1]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5592/CO/CETRA.2022.1469 INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRAFFIC PLANNING AND MODELLING