A Study of Pedestrians Choice Model Toward the Types of the Walkside in CBD

The purpose of this study is to find out the preferences of pedestrians toward sidewalk attributes and types of sidewalk. This study provides traffic engineers and urban designers with needs of pedestrians in urban business districts when it is going to be improved or renewed. The study was designed as questionnaires containing two stages.

First, it uses five-range attitude scale to get the sidewalk attributes which participants value. Second, it uses Stated Preference method with photos to show the definition of sidewalk attributes and types of sidewalk. Participants were asked to write down their first, second preferences and their degree of likeness toward each alternative.

We use MNL model and Fuzzy concept to develop the participants\' utility function of choosing different types of sidewalk for recreation, shopping and community trips. Five results of this study were: (1) As to participants\' needs for attributes of different sidewalks, recreation trips were usually valued higher than the shopping trips, and shopping trips were higher than community trips. At the same time, female put more emphasis on the requirement of sidewalk attributes than male participants did; higher educated participants did more than the lower ones.

(2) Generally, the attributes that pedestrians take care were listed below in order: public security, air, noise pollution, physical design of sidewalks, satisfaction of vision, activities. (3) Over 60% of the participants will reduce their willingness to go to the urban business district if the environment for pedestrians gets bad. Furthermore, the participants thought that an attractive urban business district should own three elements such as diverse and concentrated shopping markets, high accessibility, and a nice walking environment.

(4) Participants\' favorite type of sidewalks was pedestrian mall, and the most disliked type was woonerf. (5) Applying to MNL model, the rho- square value of the model adopted in this study for explaining shopping trips and the female is good. The reason of low rho-square value of community trips might be due to the lack of participants\' walking experiences.

Applying to Fuzzy concept, the rho-square value was found going down, but the result was near human\'s fuzzy preference.