Comparing Measures and Variables in Multimodal Street Performance Calculations

Scholars, municipalities, and federal agencies have proposed new measures for evaluating street performance for nonautomobile modes, including transit service, bicycles, and walking. These changes are in response to the critique that the current street performance measure, traditional level of service (LOS), overemphasizes the free flow of automobile traffic and neglects other users of the transportation system. Although the promise of new metrics has attracted a lot of attention, there is little documented knowledge of how these measures compare with each other. This paper reports the results of an analysis of three new tools: the LOS protocol developed by the City of Charlotte, North Carolina; the Bicycle Environmental Quality and Pedestrian Environmental Quality Indexes (considered as one tool for the purposes of this study) developed by the Department of Public Health of San Francisco, California; and the Highway Capacity Manual 2010 multimodal LOS. Analysis of the scores produced by these tools enabled a comparison of these metrics and revealed that these tools can produce radically different output scores. The contribution of specific variables to the overall score for each measure and mode was examined to explain these scoring differences. Although more research is needed to understand whether these differences always hold true, this paper will help practitioners and the research community better understand the promise of these new measures and the challenges that lie ahead.