Using Stated Preference Methods to Evaluate Road Users’ Perceptions of Shared Space Scenarios

Abstract

The concept of shared space has been gradually becoming a widely accepted urban design principle in Europe It is an approach intended to reconcile the traffic in public realms and to improve the comfort of pedestrians by reducing the dominance of motor vehicles With this concept it would be not uncommon to see different types of road users mixed in traffic including vulnerable users such as pedestrians and two wheelers Understanding the perception of users in shared spaces is the key to their successful design Although this is a new idea promoted in Western societies it is easy to see such space sharing phenomena in South East Asian cities The aim of this study is to investigate the perception of users in shared spaces containing pedestrians cyclists motorcyclists and motorists Data were collected by a questionnaire using a photo survey technique in Taiwan where people have been used to space sharing environments for decades The factors affecting the road use experience such as land use density road form pedestrian facilities pavement vegetation lighting level and traffic management tools were embedded in the photo survey for the purpose of testing the most preferred shared space road user scenarios Also personal characteristics and mode choice information were asked in the questionnaire The multinomial logit (MNL) modelling technique and the nested logit (NL) modelling technique were used to describe the respondents’ preferences to the scenarios and to quantify the effects of the design-specific factors related to shared spaces The results showed that regardless of the kind of road user perceptions road users are sensitive to vehicular traffic density factors For pedestrians high pedestrian density presence of vendors arcades narrow road brick paving parking in middle of the road traffic management tools and vegetation along the road were found to make pedestrians comfortable with walking through such areas For drivers high pedestrian density and vehicular traffic density presence of vendors narrow road width brick paving parking in middle of the road vegetation along the road and presence of traffic management tools were found to enhance driver alertness However a lack of demarcations and traffic management tools were found to enhance pedestrian comfort and driver alertness The results also revealed an interesting finding suggesting that the presence of safe zones (i e pedestrian facilities such as arcades) will reduce driver alertness and that high vehicular traffic density will increase driver alertness These insights are useful with regard to shared space design principles as well as to the implementation of shared space schemes in Western societies

Date of Award	2016 Aug 31
Original language	English
Supervisor	Tzu-Chang Lee (Supervisor)