DEVELOPMENT OF LEVEL OF SERVICE CRITERIA FOR PEDESTRIANS

Pedestrian facilities are provided to facilitate and encourage for short distance travel. The level of service (LOS) criteria available in the literature for pedestrian facilities are more adaptable to the pedestrian scenarios in the US than in a developing country like India. This paper presents the LOS criteria under two conditions, one for pedestrian movements along the carriageway on or at its side and another for the movement on a pedestrian facility. Data was collected in two different years (2007 and 2009) for the above mentioned two conditions. The LOS criteria were developed using two different approaches and the two data sets. One approach is based on the rate of change of curvature of the pedestrian flow-area module curve and another is based on speed ratio-density plot. It is observed that the pedestrian space criterion is more uniform and stable than the pedestrian flow criterion in defining the LOS of a facility. The suggested criterion for sidewalks and wide sidewalks will be very useful in revising the IRC codes on pedestrian facilities.