Shared Space and Pedestrian Safety: Empirical Evidence from Pedestrian Priority Street Projects in Seoul, Korea

Abstract

To provide safe and comfortable walking environments on narrow streets without sidewalks, the Seoul city government has implemented the Pedestrian Priority Street (PPS) projects. Based on Monderman’s “shared space” concept, the PPS involves applying diverse paving design techniques, particularly stamped asphalt pavement of various colors and patterns. This study investigated the effectiveness of the PPS for pedestrian safety. Data sources were; (1) video recordings of the nine concurrent PPS in 2014 before and after the projects were completed; and (2) a cross-sectional survey at the nine streets. Two groups of multiple regression models analyzed the objective safety, by using the variables, mean vehicle speed and change in mean speed, which were then compared with subjective safety through a questionnaire analysis. The results found that the design strategies reduced the vehicle speed and increased perceptions of pedestrian safety. These suggest that the PPS principles are practical and feasible ways to tackle the safety problems of narrow streets without sidewalks. Further, vehicle speeds increased on streets where the pedestrian zone was clearly distinguishable from the vehicular zone, by applying PPS techniques only at the roadside. Thus, clearly separating pedestrians from vehicular zones, which is neither the original principle, nor the intent of the PPS, should be avoided.

The Impact of PM10 Levels on Pedestrian Volume: Findings from Streets in Seoul, South Korea

“…This is related to specific road conditions in Seoul. Seoul has many narrow streets without a sidewalk, which are called i-myeon-do-ro in Korean (back roads), and pedestrians and vehicles share these streets [89]. In this context, people tend to perceive the i-myeon-do-ro without centerlines as more pedestrian-oriented spaces, because centerlines are a typical symbol of streets for vehicles [90,91].…”

Perceived Safety and Pedestrian Performance in Pedestrian Priority Streets (PPSs) in Seoul, Korea: A Virtual Reality Experiment and Trace Mapping

“…To test distinctive effects by design type, among the PPSs completed in 2014–2017, we selected three representative streets based on Lee and Kim’s standard [ 1 ] (pp. 6–7).…”

“…6–7). They classified the PPSs into three type depending on “the extent of “visual separation (VS)” between vehicles and pedestrians, which was created by the paving patterns” [ 1 ] (p. 6; Table 1 ). In addition, one typical street in Seoul that has similar conditions with PPS apart from pavement design was selected for a control group.…”

“…A narrow street without sidewalks is representative of spaces that threatening pedestrian safety in cities. These streets, called alleys, back roads, or access streets, are found all over the world including in rapidly developing megacities where infrastructure cannot keep pace with economic growth as well as in old towns in advanced countries where organic patterns remain [ 1 ]. In such streets, pedestrians are forced to share the spaces with vehicles under extremely dangerous conditions [ 1 ].…”

“…Kim and Shim [ 7 ] verified the impact of surface design on driving behavior through driving experiments and determined that the visual elements of PPS were insufficient to cause decisive changes in driving. However, Lee and Kim [ 1 ], who analyzed the vehicle speed measured before and after the PPS project, argued that applying inappropriate design would rather increase speed. They also suggested that pedestrians’ perceived risk could vary depending on the environment.…”