A pedestrian level of service method for evaluating and promoting walking facilities on campus streets

Modern universities seek policies to sustain the streets on their campuses by making campus streets pedestrian-friendly. To maintain inclusive streets, campus designers and planners should consider all users. Currently, there are efforts to evaluate street conditions for pedestrians. However, a limited range of pedestrian facilities and abilities make the results of previous studies insufficient to evaluate and promote inclusive walking facilities. This study attempts to create a foundation for evaluating and improving campus streets for pedestrians. This research presents pedestrian design indicators based on different guidelines that consider various pedestrian needs. This paper also introduces the pedestrian level of service (PLOS) for campuses, which is a measure to evaluate campus street facilities and infrastructure for pedestrians. An analytical point system comparing existing pedestrian facilities to a standard is proposed to estimate this PLOS. Although this method can be utilized on campuses around the world, this research uses it to assess streets on the campus of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). This method can identify existing street problems for pedestrians and can be used to propose improvements to existing campus streets. Since this study tries to serve all requirements of pedestrians, specifically vulnerable users whether old or disabled, designers have room to implement accessible routes for pedestrians in campus streets. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.