Research On The Walkability Analysis And The Pedestrian Transportation Planning And Design

Walking is human’s born ability. It is the healthiest and most eco-friendly transportation mode. Walking has great benefits for the sustainable development of cities. It has been drawing increasing attention from the urban planning and transportation planning fields. The thesis regards the walkability as studying object and researches the subject of walking-the people, including the relationship between walkability and travel behavior, the relationship between walkability and walking experience, and the pedestrian transportation planning and design methods based on these researches.Walkability is interpreted as a construct, which needs conceptual definition and operational definition. Walkability is also divided into urban walkability and street walkability according to the research scale.The conceptual definition of urban walkability is how much the urban form supports walking. Nanjing household travel survey data in the 2012 and current geographic information data (e.g. land use, transportation facilities and POI) are used to research the effects of urban forms of residential areas on travel behaviors from the aggregate and disaggregate levels.In the aggregate level, the residential areas of 1996 households are grouped into 4 clusters, which have different urban walkabilities, using hierarchical clustering with 5 urban form variables. ANOVA and TukeyHSD are then used to analyze the differences of travel patterns among these 4 clusters. Since the improvement of urban walkability increases the use of walking and public transit and decrease the use of private automobile, in the disaggregate level, after controlling travelers’ social-economical attributes and distance attributes, the effects of urban form attributes on walking mode choice, public transit mode choice and personal VKT by private car are researched by building multinomial logit model, binary logit model and linear regression model. The model coefficients are analyzed and the effects of urban form attributes that constitute urban walkability on travel behaviors are got.The conceptual definition of street walkability is how much street environment benefits walking. A street measurement survey and a street video score survey were conducted in Nanjing. The effects of street environment on walking experience are researched with these data. The street measurement survey records 23 street elements of 18 streets (36 walking cross sections if counting two sides).15 persons participated the street score video survey by watching the videos of all walking cross sections. The street video score survey form was designed using Likert scale technique. Using the street measurement survey data,18 variables capturing the street walking environment are designed and 5 factors are extracted from these 18 variables using explanatory factor analysis. The street video score are modeled with these 5 factors using ordered logit model. The model results are analyzed and the effects of street environment attributes that constitute street walkability on street walking scores are got.The pedestrian transportation planning and design method are researched from three aspects* network, space and environment. The walking network planning aims to improve urban walkability, and the walking space design and the walking environment aim to improve street walkability. The potential walking demand forecasting method is proposed and implemented with R language, which can be used as the key technique for pedestrian transportation planning. In walking network planning, three pedestrian zoning methods are proposed to move the pedestrian transportation planning scale from city to people. The walkway hierarchies which consider the adjacent land use and architectural design are proposed. The requirements of walkway network density are proposed according to the relationship between the intersections intervals and the walking experience. The connection of pedestrian network and public transit and the evaluation indexes of pedestrian network are researched. In walking space design, the sidewalk and crosswalk design method in both the developed and undeveloped area are discussed. The research of walking environment design is problem oriented. The problems of walking environment which were found in the street measurement survey are summarized and the corresponding pedestrian environment design methods are proposed. The research contents include sidewalks, signals on crossings, bus stops, street furnishings, landscaping, channelized islands, traffic calming, management and maintenance.