Spatial Variations in Pedestrian and Bicycle Level of Service (LOS) for Infrastructure Planning and Resource Allocation

The objective of this paper is to compute pedestrian and bicycle level of service (LOS) for 578 signalized interactions, examine spatial variations in the computed LOS, and compare them with pedestrian and bicycle crash locations. Data for Charlotte, North Carolina, were used to compute LOS; examine spatial variations in LOS and crashes; assess walkability, bikeability, and their effect on livability; and present the outcomes from the research. Data and analysis showed 37.17% of the selected signalized intersections have a pedestrian LOS of D or worse while 85.39% of the signalized intersections have a bicycle LOS of D or worse. The computed LOS (indicators of walkability and bikeability) for the selected signalized intersections was observed to vary by area type. As expected, the LOS was observed to decrease with an increase in the distance from the downtown/uptown area. While the LOS at the selected signalized intersections is good in downtown/uptown areas, it is relatively low at the selected signalized intersections in other areas. However, pedestrian and bicycle crashes tend to be relatively higher in number and distributed throughout the core urban area while they are lower in number in the suburban area. Integrating the computed pedestrian and bicycle LOS for the signalized intersections with activity levels or surrogate data such as land use, demographic, and socioeconomic data along with pedestrian and bicycle crash locations would help identify critical locations and assist in efficient allocation of resources based on the actual need.