DEVELOPMENT OF LEVEL OF SERVICE

CRITERIA FOR PEDESTRIANS IN INDIAN

CONTEXT

A SEMINAR REPORT
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the award of the degree

of

MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY
In

TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING
By

SUVAM BANERJEE
17TE06003

SCHOOL OF INFRASTRUCTURE

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BHUBANESWAR

ARGUL, JATNI-752050, ODISHA

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 ABSTRACT

Pedestrians form the largest single road user group and also are the most vulnerable road users.

Pedestrians movements are not restricted to lanes or specific routes however they are restricted

by the physical boundaries around them such as the presence of walkways or pedestrian ways or

even on carriageways. To know how well roadways accommodate pedestrian travel or how they

are pedestrian friendly it becomes necessary to assess the walking conditions. It would also help

evaluating and prioritizing the needs of existing roadways for sidewalk construction. Estimation

of Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) is the most common approach to assess the quality of

operations of pedestrian facilities. The focus of this study is to identify and access the suitable

methodology to evaluate PLOS for off-street pedestrian facilities. Defining the level of service

criteria for urban off-streets pedestrian facilities are basically classification problems. Different

techniques have been highlighted involving different parameters are considered to classify PLOS

categories of off-street pedestrian facilities. And from the analysis six LOS categories i.e. A, B,

C, D, E and F which are having different ranges of the four parameters are defined. From the

study it found that pedestrian faces a good level of service of A, B and C are more often

than at poor levels of service of D, E and F.

Key words: Pedestrian Level of service, Pedestrian Facilities

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 CONTENTS

Pg No

1. INTRODUCTION 4-5

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 6-11

3. CONCLUSIONS 12

4. REFERENCES 13-14

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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Walking is an important mode of mobility in developing countries as at the start or end of

any trip every individual is a pedestrian. Being in search of sustainable transportation system

solution importance to pedestrian movement is given prominently by planners. A pedestrian

friendly facility is always sought for so as to encourage its use. This study is completely

focused to look at the different methods of development of Level of Service (LOS) criteria

for pedestrian along walkways, crosswalks and other non dedicated pedestrian facilities

(mainly found in Indian scenario). PLOS (Pedestrian Level of Service) reflects how

comfortable a user feels to be in that pedestrian facility. HCM (Highway Capacity Manual)

suggest guidelines for deciding PLOS. But since in Indian conditions often pedestrians use

carriageway either due to absence of separate walkway facilities or due to occupancy of

walkways by vendors development of PLOS in Indian context needs special attention.

Therefore development of PLOS with respect to Indian conditions is mainly being studied

here. Straight walkways as well as crosswalks are subjected to study to develop LOS criteria.

Different levels of user satisfaction is designated by different levels from A to F. IS 103-2012

gives 6 LOS categories for pedestrians based on pedestrian space and flow rate.

Quantification of all LOS is as follows:

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 LOS Categories Pedestrian Space(m2/p) Flow Rate(p/min/m)

A >4.9 <=12

B >3.3-4.9 <=12-15

C >1.9-3.3 <=15-21

D >1.3-1.9 <=21-27

E >0.6-1.3 <=27-45

F <0.6 varies

In this report different mathematical techniques have been focused including cluster analysis,

multinomial logit regression to handle classification problems mainly to arrive at the

threshold limits of different categories of PLOS.

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 CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 General

The Level of Service concept was first introduced in the year HCM in 1965.Later it was

applied to pedestrian movement as well. HCM 2000 defined pedestrian LOS by dividing it

into two segments that is uninterrupted pedestrian facility and interrupted pedestrian facility.

As per IRC 103-2012(Ref. 1) Pedestrian Level of Service indicates the environmental

qualities of a pedestrian space and serves as a guide for development of standards for

pedestrian facilities. Nine parameters were concluded to govern the quality of service out of

which six relates to the physical characteristics of the footpath facility namely footpath

width, footpath surface, obstruction, encroachment, potential of vehicular conflict, and

continuity and other three related to user which are pedestrian volume, security and comfort

conditions.

2.2 Development of PLOS criteria using Cluster Analysis

Bhuyan et al.(2013, Ref 2) selected two important cities Bhubaneswar and Rourkela in

Odisha state in India and developed the LOS criteria using Affinity Propagation Clustering

(Ref 9). Affinity Propagation is a theoretical clustering developed by Frey and Dueck (2007).

A set of representative samples called exemplars are found randomly and iterating it to

improve the choice of exemplars. Messages are interchanged between exemplars and other

points at every iteration until a quality set of exemplars come up with clearly defined

clusters. Using high resolution video camera pedestrian flow data was collected and

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individual pedestrian speed was calculated using stopwatch. After getting the information

related to average pedestrian space, flow rate, average travel speed and v/c ratio, it was feed

into cluster analysis format to derive the threshold values which are given in the following

figures:

Table 1 PLOS categories (Ref 2)

In his other work (2014, Ref 3) Bhuyan et al. used three methods to cluster data namely

Affinity Propagation Clustering(AP), GA-Fuzzy Clustering and SOM in ANN clustering.

Different validayion measures namely Silhoutte Index (SI), Davies Bouldin Index(DBI),

CaliskiHarabasz Index (CHI) and Dunn Index (DI) to conclude the justified number of

clusters(categories) to define PLOS is six. Wilks Lambda is defined as the ratio of within

groups variance to total variance which when applied to three methods indicates the best

method out of the three. GA Fuzzy Clustering method is concluded to be the best and its

results as given by Bhuyan is shown :

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 Table 2 PLOS categories (Ref 3)
Vedagiri and Marisamynathan (2017, Ref 5) developed PLOS categories at signalized

intersections. Data was collected with video and user perception at eight selected locations.

Pedestrian crossing behavior was modeled taking care of the arrival pattern, crossing speed

and pedestrian vehicular interaction which was developed based on the data collected.

Pedestrian delay model was prepared based on pedestrian crossing behavior and using delays

calculated from that model and user perception scores PLOS model was designed and using

k-means and FCM clustering methods obtained the threshold values for different PLOS

categories. The proposed PLOS categories are shown:

Tab 3 PLOS score (Ref 5)

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2.3 Development of PLOS criteria using Multinomial Logit Model

Bhuyan et al.(2017, Ref 6) performed perception questionnaire survey using five primary

variables namely traffic, safety, comfort and convenience, road maintenance and aesthetics

and even an overall rating was being asked for. The study basically converted the perceived

score of each variable from discrete to continuous in a normalized 10 point scale and the

overall satisfaction was taken in a six point scale 1,2,3,4,5,6 corresponding to extremely

satisfied, very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied and

extremely dissatisfied respectively. The overall satisfaction rate is being given as a dependent

variable and five independent variable score such as traffic score (T), safety score (S),

comfort score (C), maintenance score (M) and aesthetic score (A). Multinomial Logit

Regression have been used to frame the equation that gives the average probability of

satisfaction level and the corresponding average level of service facility and from there the

category can be predicted as follows:

Tab 4 Range of PLOS (Ref 6)

2.4 Development of PLOS criteria using other methods

Chandra et al. (Ref 7) developed the PLOS criteria based on Indian conditions. In their study

data were collected in two sets one from those places where there is no sidewalks and

pedestrians move along carriageway and other set where dedicated sidewalk facility is being

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provided. For the first set of data flow-area module curve for pedestrians (Ref 8) was formed.

Double differentiation of flow with respect to area module would give the curvature. The rate

of change of curvature needs to be calculated at very small increments of area module. The

points where this change is abrupt is being noted to be the demarcation of PLOS categories.

For the second set of data corresponding to the dedicated walkway facilities, ratio of

pedestrian speed to free flow speed is plotted against density. The threshold limits that

indicated change in quality were identified using standard F-test. For second set different

cases were being considered based on width of the highway as well i.e. normal sidewalks

with less than 4.5m width and wide sidewalks with more than 4.5m width to develop PLOS.

The PLOS criteria are tabulated as follows:

Tab 5 PLOS for pedestrian movement along carriageway (Ref 7)

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 Tab 6 PLOS criteria based on speed ratio for sidewalks (Ref 7)

Even a PLOS model was developed considering pedestrian flow, width of the sidewalk,

obstruction/encroachment, presence of buffer and flow in the adjacent vehicular lane.

Regression Analysis showed that high correlation exists between PLOS score with pedestrian

flow and effective width (i.e. Walkway width-Obstructions).

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 CHAPTER 3

CONCLUSIONS

Developing PLOS criteria with respect to Indian context is necessary as Indian condition do

vary a lot in comparison to developed countries. Cluster Analysis is a powerful mathematical

technique to solve classification problems which makes its use very significant. As Chandra

et al. classified two categories of pedestrian movement one along carriageway and the other

along walkway it is a better way to classify as situation is different and both cases cant be

generalized. But since Chandra hasnt mentioned the basis behind rate of change of

curvature to be the threshold limit determinant thereby Cluster Analysis with its sound

background is definitely a better solution. For a complete PLOS criteria development it is

also required to separately consider signalized and unsignalized intersections where criterias

are developed on a completely different basis.

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 CHAPTER 4
REFERENCES

1. IRC :103-2012 Guidelines For Pedestrian Facilities, Indian Road Congress

2. Sahani, R., and Bhuyan, P.K.,(2013) Level of Service Criteria of off-street Pedestrian

Facilities in Indian Context using Affinity Propagation Clustering Procedia - Social and

Behavioral Sciences 104 ( 2013 ) 718 727

3. Sahani,R., Bhuyan, P.K.,(2014) Pedestrian Level Of Service Criteria for Urban off-street

facilities in mid sized cities Transport 32(2), 221-232

4. Beura, S.K., Chellapilla, H., Jena, S., Bhuyan, P.K.,Service Quality Assessment of

Shared Use Road Segments: A Pedestrian Perspective Proceedings of 2nd International

Conference on Intelligent Computing and Applications, 653-669

5. Marisamynathan, S., Vedagiri, P.,(2017) Modeling Pedestrian Level of Service at

Signalized Intersection Under Mixed Traffic Conditions, Transportation Research

Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2634, 8694.

6. Sahani, R., Praveena, D., Bhuyan, P.K., Use of Multinomial Logit Model in Evaluation

of Service Levels of Pedestrian Facilities, Conference: TPMDC 2016,IIT Bombay,

Mumbai, Volume: 12th edition.

7. Rastogi, R., Chandra, S., Mohan, M., Development Of Level of Service criteria for

Pedestrians, Journal of Indian Road Congress, January-March,2014,60-69

8. Rastogi, R., Ilango, T., Chandra, S., Pedestrian Flow Characteristics for Different

Pedestrian Facilities and Situations European Transport \ Trasporti Europei Issue 53

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9. Frey, J.B., Dueck, D., Clustering by Passing Messages Between Data Points, Science

315(5814), 972-976

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