Evaluating Service Criteria of Urban Streets in Developing Countries Based on Road Users’ Perception

The objective of this research is to develop a model that can be used to assess level of service (LOS) delivered by urban street segments in developing countries. An innovative survey questionnaire was developed taking 33 questions related to the quality of service (QOS) attributes affecting road user’s satisfaction under mixed traffic flow condition. A road user’s satisfaction survey was carried out, in which participants were requested to assess the QOS attributes and overall satisfaction (OS) on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The 33 responses were summarized into eight uncorrelated sets of variables using factor analysis. A Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value of 0.836 indicates that the sample size is suitable for factor analysis. The model was developed using multiple linear regression analysis to predict the OS of urban street taking eight principal components as independent variables. The prediction performance of the developed model and significance of the input data sets were statistically checked. An R² value of 0.709 and adjusted R² value of 0.683 signifies the suitability of the model for its universal application. The predicted OS scores are classified into six categories by applying k-means clustering to assign the threshold values for six LOS classes. Most of the road segments were found out with provided service categories “C” or below. Hence necessary actions should be undertaken by the transportation authorities to achieve higher LOS scores.