Assessment of walkability and public transport services in Luyang, Kota Kinabalu

Lillian Gungat; Nicollyne Justin; Fauziah Mohd Said; Nurmin Bolong; Mohd Azizul Ladin.

Excessive carbon dioxide emission is becoming one of the main concerns of the world in recent years. To reduce adverse impacts, walking is the best method as it greatly aids in the reduction of carbon emission released from motorized vehicles. Walkability has always been related to environmental issues around the world. This study investigates the improvement indicators of walkability and public transport service at Luyang, Kota Kinabalu as it has a high concentration of pedestrians especially during morning markets. The study was conducted via field observation and questionnaire distribution and then analyzed by using Analytical Hierarchy Process to determine the safety, connectivity and comfortability indicators with their respective weightages and ranking. It has been found that the most concerning and bothersome factor is comfortability as there are lack of comfortability aspects in Luyang. The most concerning issue regarding the services of bus in Luyang was the amount of bus stops within 800m radius of the boundary area, followed by the frequency of bus and lastly the comfort aspects of public transport services. Along with that, the walkability index in Luyang is satisfactory as they are higher than 0.5, with the highest walkability index of 0.758. Therefore, the walkability index evaluation has been found successful and the factor that should be focused to improve the walkability shall be the comfortability of Luyang.

KEYWORDS: Comfortability; connectivity; pedestrians; public transport; walkability index.



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