This paper analyzes the transferability of a composite walkability index, the Pedestrian Index of the Environment (PIE), to the Greater Montréal Area (GMA). The PIE was developed in Portland, Oregon, and is based on proprietary data. It combines six urban form variables into a score ranging from 20 to 100. The measure introduces several methodological refinements which have not been applied concurrently in previous efforts: a wide coverage of the different dimensions of the urban form, together with the use of a distance-based decay function and modelling-based weighing of the variables. This measure is applied to the GMA using local data in order to evaluate the feasibility of its transfer (the possibility of locally replicating the measure). It is then included in a series of mode choice models to assess its transferability (the capacity of the measure to describe walkability and predict mode choice in another urban area). The models, segmented by trip distance or trip purpose, are estimated and validated against observed trip data from the 2013 Origin-Destination survey. Significant positive correlation is found between the PIE and the choice of walking for short trips, for all purposes as well as for four specific trip purposes. The inclusion of the PIE also improves the accuracy of the modelling process as well as the prediction of the choice of walking for short trips. The PIE can therefore be used in the GMA, and potentially in other metropolitan areas, to improve the modelling of travel behavior for short trips.
Streets have long been designed to maximize motor vehicle throughput, ignoring other street users. Many cities are now reversing this trend and implementing policies to design more equitable streets. However, few existing tools and metrics enable widescale assessment, evaluation, and longitudinal tracking of these street space rebalancing efforts, i.e., assessing how equitable the current street design is, how it can be improved, and how much progress has been made. This paper develops a needs-gap methodology for assessing the discrepancy between transportation supply and demand in urban streets using existing datasets and automated methods. The share of street space allocated to different street users is measured in 11 boroughs of Montréal, Canada. Travel survey data is used to estimate the observed and potential travel demand in each borough in the AM peak period. A needs-gap analysis is then carried out. It is found that bus riders and cyclists face the greatest needs-gap across the study area, especially in central boroughs. The needs-gap also increases if only trips produced or attracted by a borough are considered. This shows the potential of applying an equity-based framework to the automated assessment of street space allocation in cities using large datasets.
The urban structure of neighborhoods has a decisive impact on active mobility, but this impact is hard to evaluate in a mode choice model because of the high collinearity between urban form variables and the uncertainty surrounding adequate spatial measurement parameters. Several composite scores, or walkability measures, have emerged from the literature, each using its own method and including different variables. No consensus has been reached on the size of the catchment area that should be used to measure walkability and most studies only measure walkability at the origin of the trip without considering other spatial units. In this paper, a series of four walkability measures: the Pedestrian Index of the Environment (PIE), the Walkability Index (WI), the Pedestrian Potential Index (PPI) and the Neighborhood Destination Accessibility Index (NDAI), are applied to the Greater Montréal Area to examine their correlation with the choice of walking for short trips. Several definitions of a neighborhood are tested for each measure, as well as several spatial units of measurement. A series of binary logistic regressions are then estimated using observed trip data from the 2013 Montreal Origin–Destination Survey to identify which measure, using which spatial parameters, offers the best performance in a mode choice modeling context. Measures using a diversity of urban form variables, the WI and the PIE, are found to offer the best performance, especially when measured at a scale smaller than a 1.6 km radius, while the spatial unit offering the best model fit varies between trip purposes.
The increasing popularity of street redesigns highlights the intense competition for street space between their different users. More and more cities around the world mention in their planning documents their intention to rebalance streets in favor of active transportation, transit, and green infrastructure. However, few efforts have managed to formalize quantifiable measurements of the balance between the different users and usages of the street. This paper proposes a method to assess the balance between the three fundamental dimensions of the street—the link, the place, and the environment—as well as a method to assess the adequation between supply and demand for the link dimension at the corridor level. A series of open and government georeferenced datasets were integrated to determine the detailed allocation of street space for 11 boroughs of the city of Montréal, Canada. Travel survey data from the 2013 Origine-Destination survey was used to model different demand profiles on these streets. The three dimensions of the street were found to be most unbalanced in the central boroughs of the city, which are also the most dense and touristic neighborhoods. A discrepancy between supply and demand for transit users and cyclists was also observed across the study area. This highlights the potential of using a distributive justice framework to approach the question of the fair distribution of street space in an urban context.
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