Identification of Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) for developing Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) A Theoretical Approach using Expert Opinion on a Fuzzy Likert (FL) Scale

A wide range of literature is available about assessing Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS), which use different approaches and different Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) - or attributes - to characterise the PLOS models. In recent years, there has been a growing consensus of capturing three different constructs in the PLOS model - flow characteristics of the pedestrian traffic, the built walking environment and the user's perception. Existing PLOS literature has been capturing these broad constructs, but not in a combined fashion. This paper explores the MOEs responsible for developing such a PLOS and records expert opinion surveys on a Fuzzy-Likert (FL) scale. Three established rating data techniques-TOPSIS, RIDIT are GRA are then utilised to get a ranking of the MOEs that could be further used to develop the said PLOS model. It is seen from these rankings that of the top 10 MOEs preferred by the experts, nine belong to the broad construct categories of design (built walking environment) and the user's perception, and only one belongs to the broad construct of flow characteristics. This result reinforces the fact that the PLOS has to be created using all the three broad constructs and not separately - or in pairs - as had been done so far. This study also deals with the effectiveness of using an FL scale compared to a Likert scale as a response measurement tool and found that an FL scale is 13.08% more accurate than a Likert scale in measuring ordinal responses.