Contemporary Engineering Sciences, Vol. 8, 2015, no. 21, 981 - 990 HIKARI Ltd, www.m-hikari.com http://dx.doi.org/10.12988/ces.2015.57202 Empirical Analysis of Pedestrian Delay Models at Urban Intersections Luca Mantecchini DICAM, School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Bologna viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy Filippo Paganelli DICAM, School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Bologna viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy Copyright © 2015 Luca Mantecchini and Filippo Paganelli. This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Signalized crosswalks are useful pedestrian facilities but complexities in geometry and configuration arise, especially in congested urban areas, directly affecting safety, cycle length and delay. Universal design criteria are not dealt with by manuals. Scientific literature has proven that pedestrians look for the shortest path at crosswalks, sometimes even adopting unsafe behaviour. On the other hand, drivers’ habits are scarcely bothered by pedestrian signage. The analysis of pedestrians’ cognitive path and choices is fundamental as well as the prediction of irresponsible actions. Delay is a widely adopted parameter to assess pedestrian Level of Service. In this work, a comparison among renowned models to estimate pedestrian delay at signalized crosswalk is set and double-checked with a field study in the city of Bologna – Italy. Keywords: Level of Service, pedestrian delay, traffic signal 1 Introduction Pedestrian crossing time is basically a function of crosswalk length and walking speed [1-3]. However, when pedestrian demand increases at both sides of the crosswalk, interaction phenomena are present. The crossing time (Tc) can be estimated as a function (1) of initial start-up lost time (I), crosswalk length (L), walk-