Pedestrian Level of Service Model for Urban Streets

This paper discusses proposed changes to the Pedestrian Level of Service model for urban streets which may be included in the next Highway Capacity Manual. Even if they are not adopted however, their application should be considered by practitioners for ongoing evaluations of urban street pedestrian level of service. Over the past decade, the pedestrian level of service model for roadway segments, developed for the Florida Department of Transportation in 2001, has become a leading method for evaluating walking conditions along roadways throughout North America. This model will likely be included in the upcoming edition of the Highway Capacity Manual. Since its development, the model has been tested and applied on hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, sometimes under conditions atypical of the original dataset. Two examples of include central business districts in very large metropolitan areas and very low volume collector/local streets. Focused testing in these environments occurred during the evaluation of the model as part of National Cooperative Highway Research Program 3-70, Multimodal Level of Service Analysis for Urban Streets. This repeated testing has led the researchers to conclude that several minor refinements to the model may be appropriate. These refinements include 1) a modification of the treatment of shoulder striping, 2) a modification of the model’s on-street parking coefficient, 3) an upper limit for the model’s sidewalk presence coefficient, and 4) an adjustment factor for low motorized-vehicle volume residential streets. Until the opportunity arises for these refinements to be officially adopted, which may occur when the upcoming edition of the Highway Capacity Manual is released, their application should be considered by practitioners for ongoing evaluations of urban street pedestrian level of service.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Petritsch, Theodore Anton
  • McLeod, Peyton Stewart
  • Landis, Bruce W
  • McLeod, Douglas S
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
• Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 89th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Central business districts; City planning; Level of service; Multimodal transportation; Operations; Pedestrian traffic; Planning and design; Sidewalks; Urban highways
• Identifier Terms: Highway Capacity Manual
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01152350
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 10-1186
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Mar 16 2010 6:13AM