Making walking more comfortable and enjoyable
How can pedestrian comfort be improved? Dr Alexander Erath, Prof. Bige Tuncer and Dr Michael van Eggermond share their insights in the Urban Redevelopment Authority's (URA) Skyline magazine.
"We spend so much time walking each day but we do not pay enough attention to the quality of our walking experiences even if it is just walking from point A to B,” says Dr Alexander Erathin an article in the Urban Development Authority's (URA) Skyline magazine.
Dr Erath, Principal Investigator (PI) of Engaging Mobility & Co-PI of Cognition, Perception, and Behaviour in Urban Environments, Prof. Bige Tuncer, PI of Big Data-Informed Urban Design and Governance & Co-PI of Cognition, Perception and Behaviour in Urban Environments and Pedestrian Comfort in High Pedestrian Activity Areas, and Dr Michael Van Eggermond, senior researcher of the Engaging Mobility team share their insights on a multidisciplinary study that they and their team conducted to understand people’s choices and behaviours on where they choose to walk around areas with high pedestrian activity.
In the article, the researchers share on the importance of pedestrian comfort. According to Prof. Tuncer, pedestrian comfort can mean many things, such as safety and security, thermal comfort, protection from the elements, variability in facades, and crowdedness, but it can also contribute to be a certain quality of a city. And Dr. Grath adds that this multi-facaeted comfort is important due to being more exposed to the environment as compared to other modes of transport.
Dr Erath shared an interesting finding from the study on how people are willing to walk longer distances especially in the city centre. He also added that people were found to try to find the most direct route to get from point A to B. This meant that they are more likely to jaywalk across a road instead of using an overpass. People were also found to value comfort. Prof. Tuncer also mentioned findings on people's preference for openess and less seperators in walkways.
The researchers also shared their insights on whether their study will have any implications on how walkways will be designed in a post COVID-19 scenario. According to Dr Eggermond, the necessity of spending more time around our homes indicates that pedestrian comfort around these areas should also be looked into.
The article external page"Where we walk" is published in the Urban Redevelopment Authority's (URA) Skyline magazine.