Evaluation of the urban pedestrian environment: a qualitative approach

Abstract

The explosive increase in vehicular traffic in India has relegated the pedestrian to subways, overbridges and even the vehicular carriageway. A pedestrian is often neglected in the overall scheme of transportation planning, and design. With a major proportion of trips in Indian cities being performed by foot, it is only logical that serious thought should be given to the various issues relevant to pedestrians such as safety, comfort and amenities. The objective of this research is to formulate an evaluation method which would resolve the limitations of the existing methods, as most of them are unable to appraise the entire gamut of the walking experience. Numerical standards fail to evaluate the plethora of activities characterizing the pedestrian environment. The proposed method seeks to analyse the pedestrian environment from a qualitative perspective. The literature review assisted in classifying qualitative aspects of urban pedestrian spaces, mainly, safety, comfort, convenience and the quality of the urban environment. Qualitative evaluation criteria have been framed at two distinct levels the overall and the detailed. The analysis of the overall level characteristics would provide a broad picture of the existing environment and help in enhancing the overall levels of safety, comfort, convenience and quality of the urban pedestrian environment. The method was tested on streets in Chennai, using evaluation checklists. Graphical representations and statistical analysis of the evaluation data helped in identifying the deficiencies. Streets of diverse uses can be analysed. Subjectivity is a limitation which can be greatly reduced by the precise definition of each parameter and utilizing different researchers to evaluate the same stretch. The application of the method reveals a lot of shortcomings in the pedestrian realm, many of which would not have been revealed with quantitative techniques. This research thus validates the rational.