Grading methodology of the pedestrian urban road environment

Abstract

The improvement of pedestrian safety, mobility and convenience is an important step for the promotion of sustainable mobility in urban areas. This study presents the grading process and walkability score of the pedestrian urban environment of 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 auditors walked across the streets and using a questionnaire graded independently the pedestrian urban road environment features in each road segment and crosswalk. The auditors' team included three undergraduate students as the team members and a PhD candidate as the team leader. The questionnaire included 9 questions for the road segments and 6 questions for the crosswalks. The rating scale varied between 1 (awful) and 5 (very good) score. We calculated the average score of each question for the road segments and crosswalks across each street. Furthermore, we calculated the walkability score for each road segment and crosswalk and as an average the total walkability score of each street. The innovation of our study was that we graded separately the walkability features of each road segment and crosswalk, concluding to a total walkability score of a street as a synthesis of the auditors' grades.