Level of Pedestrian Stress in Urban Streetscapes

Abstract

Several service and performance indicators (SPIs) have recently been developed to evaluate pedestrian infrastructures, such as different walkability indexes and pedestrian level of service (P-LOS). Given that stress has become a popular SPI for bicyclists (level of traffic stress [LTS]), this study addressed stress for pedestrians as an SPI by relating measurable attributes of different urban street segment environments with pedestrian perceived stress. A stress-based pedestrian SPI was proposed to classify street segments into four levels of pedestrian stress. A total of 1,043 pedestrians across 30 segments in Bogotá were surveyed about their perceived stress. Multimodal traffic counts, location audits, and layout dimensions were collected in each segment to estimate an ordered probit model that explained four stress categories. Physical infrastructure attributes and traffic operational conditions were found to affect perceived stress at given locations. The similarities between the proposed stress index with the LTS and P-LOS are discussed, and the proposed SPI is applied to pedestrian infrastructure planning and design in light of sustainable transportation goals.