7. Why Pedestrians Do not Walk on Walkways?

Quality assessment of infrastructure often relies on performance and satisfaction analysis. Yet, pedestrians base their choices on previous experiences, perceptions, and infrastructure supportiveness, to which, traditional methods like Road Safety and Safety Performance Analysis fall short. Pedestrian decisions, influenced by ‘push factors’, determine whether they choose to walk or switch to other modes of transportation. Assigning numerical values to pedestrian experiences may lead to clustered responses due to personal biases. This paper employs a systems approach, applying Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and MICMAC analysis to understand the relationships between walkability factors and pedestrian behaviors. Further, the paper extracts important factors based on pedestrian behaviors: The paper identifies four groups of factors based on their importance in addressing pedestrian needs. It proposes a methodology for establishing hierarchies among qualitative factors, using different pedestrian behaviors as thresholds for different infrastructure conditions and experiences. Through the process, the paper identifies the absence of surface evenness, difficulty in accessing buses and IPT, and lack of cleanliness as the most important (linked factors) and common causes for various strategies ahead of the commencement of pedestrian journey. On the other side, inadequate night illumination, overcrowding, lack of continuity of walkways, presence of obstruction on walkways, lack of accessibility, and perception of an unsafe pedestrian environment as important factors that needs to be addressed as interventions to improve ‘on-arrival’ or on site experience of pedestrian supportiveness.