Pedestrian Conflicts, Pedestrian Comfort Levels, and Current Pedestrian Levels of Service

Abstract

The current methodology of analyzing pedestrian levels of service stated in the KHCM (Korean Highway Capacity Manual) excludes pedestrian comfort from its primary measures of effectiveness, resulting in mismatching levels of service calculated with the KHCM and the ones stated by pedestrians on the basis of comfort. This can lead to undesirable designs of pedestrian facilities, and in order to deal with this problem a research was carried out to apply the concept of pedestrian conflict for assessing pedestrian comfort. The approach adopted in this study included recalibrating relationships between pedestrian flow and pedestrian conflict and making adjustments to pedestrian levels of service given in the KHCM. In this effort, characteristics of pedestrian flows and conflicts for five field sites located in Seoul were investigated by using video cameras, and selected pedestrians on the five sites were interviewed to determine their levels of comfort for the given walking conditions. Based on these field survey data, this study then demonstrated that there were close relationships between pedestrian comfort, flow rate, density, and pedestrian conflict. A follow-up adjustment to pedestrian levels of service in the KHCM was proposed by this study and an additional survey of pedestrians discovered that the proposed adjustment would better explain how pedestrian comfort levels change with pedestrian flow for a given facility.