Pedestrians are becoming more diverse. Consequently, moving through public spaces needs more design consideration by urban designers. It also means accessibility and safety is more than having kerb ramps and level footpaths. Pedestrians on wheels is a new paradigm.
Mobility will become more complex as mobility choices increase especially with battery powered devices. We already have a diversity of pedestrians. They come with baby strollers, wheeled suitcases, wheelchairs, guide dogs, walking frames, and skateboards. Then we add powered devices: mobility scooters, wheelchairs, Segways, hover-boards, and e-scooters. And the line between mobility aids and other wheeled devices is blurring in terms of road and footpath use.
Manoeuvring around all these different pedestrians is difficult enough. Then we need to add in people who are using umbrellas, carrying large parcels, pushing delivery trolleys, and those looking in shop windows and their smart phones. And let’s not forget bicycles and e-bikes.
An interesting study on personal mobility devices is reported in “Diversity of “Pedestrians on Wheels”, New Challenges for Cities in 21st Century“. The article has a surprisingly long list of different categories of pedestrians and their differing obstacles and needs. For example, pedestrians with wheeled elements and pedestrians requiring more action time.
Cars take priority in planning
Traffic management authorities collect data on vehicle traffic flows, but not pedestrian movements. Data are, however, collected on pedestrian road accidents and deaths. Pedestrians who feel unsafe on the street will curtail their movement in their neighbourhood. The number of journeys not made because of road and street design are not known.
In the conclusions, the authors discuss the need for regulations for users and on the use of the devices, and using designs which can be easily detected by other pedestrians by using colour and sound.
New ideas about “Movement and Place” are at odds with the “Roads and Traffic” paradigm. Something will have to give if we want more walking. People limit where they go based on how safe they feel. Pedestrian crossings aren’t designed with all pedestrians in mind – they’re designed with traffic flows in mind.
Extract from Abstract
Reality shows us that pedestrian diversity is a reality that is becoming increasingly complex. In the 20th century the car set aside horse carriages and pedestrians. In the same way, 21st century pedestrians are taking centre stage with policies for walkability. But the design of streets for this new paradigm has yet to be solved.
Citizens on scooters, skates, skateboards, Segways, and unicycles, are added to the already traditional baby strollers, wheelchairs, and suitcases with wheels. “Pedestrians on wheels” poses new challenges of coexistence and design. These are considerations of universal accessibility that we cannot leave out while our society progresses.
This paper identifies some of these new needs and presents a progressive analysis in three phases: 1 classification of the different user of the street, 2 study of the Personal Mobility Devices (PMD) and 3, the new accessibility barriers that arise with the use of PMD. As a result, some action strategies are pointed out to respond to the difficulties of accessibility derived from this new reality and to integrate them into the universal design of the urban public space.
The article is from the proceedings of the UDHEIT 2018 conference held in Dublin, Ireland. It is open access publication.
Micromobility is now accessible for people with disability thanks to seven new designs launched by Lime. They are not “disability” specific – just good design useable by more people. The article is on FastCompany website.