Abstract
Walk-sharing is a cost-effective and proactive approach that promises to improve pedestrian safety and has been shown to be technically (theoretically) viable. Yet, the practical viability of walk-sharing is largely dependent on community acceptance, which has not, until now, been explored. Gaining useful insights on the community’s spatio-temporal and social preferences in regard to walk-sharing will ensure the establishment of practical viability of walk-sharing in a real-world urban scenario. We aim to derive practical viability using defined performance metrics (waiting time, detour distance, walk-alone distance and matching rate) and by investigating the effectiveness of walk-sharing in terms of its major objective of improving pedestrian safety and safety perception. We make use of the results from a web-based survey on the public perception on our proposed walk-sharing scheme. Findings are fed into an existing agent-based walk-sharing model to investigate the performance of walk-sharing and deduce its practical viability in urban scenarios.
Highlights
1.1 Background Walking is the most common mode of travel given its high levels of accessibility, especially for short trips (Hong and Chen 2014; Zielstra and Hochmair 2012)
We have provided a comparison for each of the performance metrics, viz. waiting time, walk-alone distance, detour distance, matching rate and safety index
6 Discussion The results obtained from the calibrated model, where the parameter selection was more informed, shows that walksharing has the ability to make a significant improvement in pedestrian safety perception levels in a real-world scenario, while exhibiting acceptable values of other performance metrics
Summary
1.1 Background Walking is the most common mode of travel given its high levels of accessibility, especially for short trips (Hong and Chen 2014; Zielstra and Hochmair 2012). Apart from being an independent mode of transport, walking serves as the most common mode of access to public transport (Bassett et al 2008). Multiple studies have revealed that the physical activity generated by walking improves people’s physical health (Giles-Corti et al 2016; Warburton et al 2006). Among young-adult Australians, walking for transport alone accounts for nearly half of their daily physical activity (Garrard 2017). Walking contributes beyond physical and mental health improvements.
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