Incorporating Pedestrian Index Into Googlemaps

Abstract

The trend for new urbanism which encourages public transportation usage has increasingly focused on pedestrian facilities. Pedestrian fac ilities can be defined as facilities that continuously provide pedestrians with safe access to land uses. Unfortunately, roadway design prioritizes the needs of motorists while putting pedestrians at ri sk. A number of studies have developed methods to determine pedestrian Level of Service (LOS). However, none have considered the road hierarchy which has a different design standard, level of road usage, access management and scope of pedestrian needs. This paper develops a pedestrian index (P-Index) which incorporates selected indicators according to road hierarchy in evaluating pedestrian facilities. The index is an analytical tool to rate pedestrian facilities using 5 star rating formats whereby the higher the number of stars, the better quality of facilities of a particular pedestrian segment. The method focuses on four indicators namely Facility, Mobility, Safety and Accessibility. Using Taman Bukit Indah, Johor Bahru as the study area, it was revealed that the overall quality of pedestrian facilities achieved three stars, which are interpreted as walkable. The rating scores of pedestrian facility are next incorporated into Google Maps to enable the public to visualise the rating score of pedestrian facilities. The index can also serve as an evaluation tool by the authorities for auditing purposes in the provision and monitoring of pedestrian facilities.

Planning and Design Support Tools for Walkability: A Guide for Urban Analysts

“…According to the basic subdivision into four families of factors, the selected walkability evaluation methods revealed that even though, overall, many studies of walkability transversally touch all the families, thus proving to adopt a multidimensional approach, single methods differ in the emphasis given to certain families and in the way of operationalizing the measurement. Some studies focus mainly on the safety and efficiency of space [81,85], others look at the attractiveness of the city [1,28] and still others are more sensitive to pleasantness [7,10,86,87].…”