Quality-of-service: toward a standardized rating tool for pedestrian quality of urban streets

Abstract

This paper presents research to develop a quality-of service rating system for assessing the pedestrian-oriented characteristics and functions of streets that can be used easily and quickly by practitioners. Most existing methods of assessing pedestrian quality fail to take into account micro-scale landscape and urban design elements that significantly enhance the pedestrian experience, and those few that do are difficult and time-consuming to use. The proposed rating system is (a) context-sensitive, (b) capacity-sensitive, (c) takes into account micro-scale design factors, (d) is feasible to use in a professional planning practice setting, and (e) has built-in flexibility.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the following graduate student assistants who helped with the field testing: Carline Au, David Babb, Thomas Murdoch Duncan, Joanna Salem and Benjamin Waldo.