Pedestrian level of service criteria for urban off-street facilities in mid-sized cities

Abstract

Levels Of Service (LOS) evaluation criteria for off-street pedestrian facilities are not well defined in urban Indian context; hence an in-depth research is carried out in this regard. Defining Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) criteria is basically a classification problem; therefore a comparative study is made using three methods of clustering i.e. Affinity Propagation (AP), Self-Organizing Map (SOM) in Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Genetic AlgorithmFuzzy (GA-Fuzzy) clustering. Pedestrian data are used on validation measure of clustering method to obtain optimal number of cluster used in defining PLOS categories. To decide the most suitable algorithm applicable in defining PLOS criteria for urban off-street facilities in Indian context, Wilk’s Lambda is used on results of the three clustering methods. It is observed from the analysis that GA-Fuzzy is the most suitable clustering analysis among the three methods. With the help of GA-Fuzzy clustering analysis the ranges of the four measuring parameters (average pedestrian space, flow rate, speed of pedestrian and volume to capacity ratio) are defined by using the data collected from two mid-sized cities located in the state of Odisha, India. It is also observed that at >16.53 m2/ped average space, ≤0.061 ped/sec/m flow rate, >1.21 speed and ≤0.34 v/c ratio pedestrians can move in their desired path at LOS ‘A’ without changing movements and it is the best condition for off-street facilities. But in the pedestrian facility having ≤4.48 m2/ped average space, >0.146 ped/sec/m flow rate, ≤0.62 average speed and >1.00 v/c ratio, pedestrian movement is severely restricted and frequent collision among users occurs. The ranges of the parameters used for LOS categories found in this study for Indian cities are different from that mentioned in HCM (Highway Capacity Manual 2010) because of differences in population density, traffic flow condition, geometric structure and some other factors.

First published online: 10 Sep 2014

Keyword : clustering validation, off-street pedestrian facility, pedestrian level of service, affinity propagation, self-organizing map; genetic algorithm-fuzzy