Determining the role of perceived safety and comfort in using pedestrian crossing facilities

Since walking is the basic option of non-motorized transportation, promoting walkability is considered as one of the most important approaches in achieving sustainable transportation. However, the high number of pedestrian accidents has become one of the critical challenges in Iranian cities. Mostly, vehicle–pedestrian crashes occur while pedestrians cross the street. Though to improve pedestrian crossing safety, facilities like pedestrian bridges and zebra crossing are provided to cross the street at several locations, all too often pedestrians do not use them due to various factors such as their attitude and perception toward these facilities. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the influence of pedestrians’ perception on the utilization of such facilities in Shiraz. For this purpose, 697 pedestrians were interviewed at 34 different locations in which pedestrian facilities were available. The results of the ordinal logit model show that the levels of perceived safety and convenience are statistically significant for the use of zebra crossings. Also, the perceived safety of pedestrian bridges affects their usage by the pedestrians. Indeed, males tend to use at-grade level crossing more often compared to females. Moreover, an increase in age was associated with a decrease in the use of zebra crossing. The conclusions drawn from this study can help improve the safety of pedestrian crossings in future planning and practices.