Utformning av gångfartsområden

Sammanfattning: Today there is a push towards creating vibrant cities where the status of pedestrians and vehicles in the traffic environment is more equal. One possible way of enabling this is to introduce walking pace areas, where drivers must keep walking speed and also must give way to pedestrians. In this work four walking pace areas are selected in order to investigate what makes them function as intended. A number of field studies reveal that a larger number of pedestrians neither makes pedestrians more inclined to use the full width of the street nor lower the speed of the motor vehicles, which both are desirable effects of designating a street as a walking pace area. Rather, it seems that the design of the street has a bigger impact on vehicle speeds and pedestrian locations. At walking pace areas with no street furnishing nor distinct sectioning more pedestrians are walking in the middle of the street while vehicle speeds are kept down. A larger number of pedestrians and low vehicle speeds also contribute to a greater subjective satisfaction of the pedestrians. The conclusion is that walking pace areas need to both be well designed and have a critical number of pedestrians in order to function well.