A Study On Pedestrian Environment Of The Main Roads Of Beijing

Recent years, a large amount of main roads have been built in Beijing metropolitan areas with the fast development of motor vehicles traffic. Those roads were designed mainly for the high-speed through traffic, and the needs of pedestrians were greatly neglected. While actually there are lots of people walking along those main roads, and they have to used the uncomfortable pedestrian environment. This paper analyzed the fundamental causes of the pedestrian environmental problem at the main roads of Beijing, based on the study of the present situation, and tried to propose a suitable solution.The paper starts to review the evolution of the urban pedestrian environment in Europe and United States, and to present a macro-background with some lessons and experiences.The paper takes Baiyi Road as a case study where located at Beijing northwestern suburb to research its service level of the pedestrian environment using the theory of pedestrian flow and some other methods. Two main problems of the main road pedestrian environment have found out: first, the main pedestrian realm of the main roads is incontinuous, lack genius loci and low service level; second, the joint part of the main pedestrian realm, including crosswalks and bus stops, are unsafe and inconvenient.The main causes of those problems from macroscopic viewpoint are analyzed. One is that lots of pedestrians gather along the main city road because of the walled super blocks (Da-Yuan) are gathered all over in urban areas; another is that when planning and designing the main city roads, quick through traffic flow was mainly considered, but the pedestrians' needs were neglected.According to above researches, a new idea of "Multiway Boulevard" is introduced, and emphasizing on the building and construction of the pedestrian realm of the main city road. The idea aims at reducing the confliction between the high-speed through traffic on the main roads and the low-speed traffic that mostly consists of walking, so that the pedestrian conditions on the main city road could be more humanistic.Finally, according to the idea of "Multiway Boulevard", the paper sets out a few of planning and design proposals to improve the pedestrian environment of the main roads of Beijing.