Evaluation of the pedestrian infrastructure using walkability indicators

Abstract

The promotion of pedestrian safety, mobility and convenience is an important step to raise sustainable mobility in urban areas. This study presents the development and implementation of indicators that evaluate pedestrian infrastructure in urban streets. The study area was six selected roads in the city of Volos, Greece. The roads were characterized as main, collector or local urban arterials, located inside or close to the center of the city. Four suitably trained authors walked across the streets, took pictures and charted the pedestrian infrastructure for each side of the street and each road segment and crosswalk. The auditors' team included three undergraduate students as the team members and a PhD candidate as the team leader. After this step, the auditors created a drawing of the pedestrian infrastructure and counted indicators for road segments, street corners and crosswalks. The road segment indicators were split into two categories: the infrastructure ones and the street furniture ones. The result of the study was to compare the pedestrian infrastructure of the streets in terms of walkability and evaluate the convenience of pedestrians to walk on their desire route across the streets. The outcome of this study was that these indicators could be used in a pedestrian walkability study in order to notice the main problems of pedestrian infrastructure and propose focused remedial actions.