Overall level of service of urban walking environment and its influence an pedestrian route choice behavior - Analysis of pedestrian travel in Sapporo, Japan

The objective of this study was to understand and quantify better the influence of the overall level of service (LOS) of the urban walking environment on pedestrian route choice behavior. A methodology for estimating the overall LOS of pedestrian walkways and crosswalks was developed on the basis of the concept of total utility value, which comes from a stated preference survey. Each sidewalk and crosswalk link was assigned an overall LOS according to its operational and geometric characteristics determined from field measurements. For analysis of pedestrian behavior, this study used data from a revealed preference survey on individual route choice behavior. A geographic information system network database was used to store the characteristics of the routes that pedestrians used. Network analysis with the ArcGIS program was used to analyze the routes, which included determination of the shortest-path routes and the optimized-LOS-path routes between origin-destination pairs. A comparative analysis of the actual routes and the estimated alternative routes was performed. On the basis of the results, a multinomial logit model was developed to express the route choice behaviors of pedestrians quantitatively. The model results indicate that pedestrians choose routes not only for distance but also for the overall LOS of sidewalks and crosswalks. On longer travel paths, pedestrians divert from the shortest-path route and are found to use sidewalks and crosswalks with high LOS. On shorter routes, pedestrians tend not to avoid sidewalks or crosswalks with low LOS. This analysis suggests that efforts to accommodate pedestrians in urban areas should focus on improving the walking environment of the road network.