Development of comprehensive service quality assessment framework for sidewalks considering desired and actual conditions

Abstract

Pedestrian level of service (PLOS) of sidewalks measures pedestrians’ perceived satisfaction for walking conditions. Available PLOS models consider vehicular traffic, elements of built environment and user’s perception of walking environment for PLOS assessment. The available PLOS models which use pedestrian perception on walking environment require extensive pedestrian survey and the model outcomes are subjective. Moreover these models do not consider pedestrian desires or expectations, which forms the basis of their perceived satisfaction. This work proposes a PLOS assessment framework for sidewalks which considers an exhaustive list of built and walking environment-related factors and the pedestrian perceived gap between desired and actual sidewalk conditions. The relative importance attached by pedestrians to each factor while assessing overall sidewalk condition was obtained through expert survey using Fuzzy Hierarchy Process. A framework for objectively assessing pedestrian perceived satisfaction level for different built and walking environment-related factors is also proposed in this work.