An Improvement to Pedestrian’s Mobility by rehabilitating the Sidewalk with Application of AHP (Case Study)

This study investigated the effects of rehabilitation of sidewalks on improvement of the pedestrians’ mobility. In order to successfully achieve this, sidewalk characteristics were determined via previous studies, expert elicitation and field studies and seven parameters which are available in Tehran’s sidewalks were chosen. These seven parameters were “Side trees of sidewalks”, “Width of sidewalks”, “Type of sidewalks”, “Side buildings of sidewalks”, “Lighting of sidewalks”, “Side facilities of sidewalks” and “Sidewalks' pavement conditions”.  Next, four pedestrians sidewalk were randomly chosen. Using AHP method and Collected questionnaires the four sidewalks were prioritized. Sensitivity analysis was applied to find the effects of each of the seven parameters.  Considering the results, the effective parameters of each sidewalk were respectively rehabilitated by Photoshop CS3 software and the process of prioritizing was repeated. According to the obtained results, it is not necessary to improve all parameters of a sidewalk to achieve a suitable and attractive sidewalk. An attractive sidewalk will be able to achieve only by improving some certain parameters of sidewalks. The procedure used in this study will lead to save money and time in urban designs and city developments.