Accessibility measurements for urban parks considering age-grouped walkers’ sectorial travel behavior and built environment

Abstract

A walking-accessible urban park system is essential to the physical and mental health of urban residents. However, it is difficult to accurately describe the walking behavior of elderly and young visitors using empirical models (i.e., empirical threshold distance and empirical decay function), because of the differences in walking ability and distance decay among visitors of different ages. To address this challenge, this study used survey data to extract the travel behavior of elderly and younger visitors from a survey of 3625 walking respondents using a sectional threshold distance in central Wuhan. A multiple linear regression model was then built to discover how the factors influence the sectional threshold distance for different age groups. The results show that the travel time threshold for elderly visitors was approximately 0.47–1 min shorter than for other visitors, and the difference became more obvious for the 85th percentile of visitors’ segment travel time. The correlation analysis and regression results suggest that the surrounding built environment, such as restaurants, mostly had to a positive impact on sectional threshold distances, while park facilities were negatively correlated with the threshold distance. This consequently led to different accessibility levels for visitors by age, and elderly people presented an accessibility 0.0012 person/ha lower than young visitors. These findings provide a more accurate and refined decision-making basis for urban planners and managers to optimize park layouts.