Age-Friendly Urban Design for Older Pedestrian Road Safety: A Street Segment Level Analysis in Madrid

Resumen

Walking benefits older pedestrians but exposes them to traffic crashes. With an aging population, designing age-friendly cities is crucial, yet research on older pedestrian safety at a micro-level is limited. This study aims to reduce older pedestrian-vehicle collisions and create more livable environments through infrastructure policies derived from statistical data analysis. Special attention is focused on collecting a holistic set of infrastructure variables to reflect most of the street built environment elements, which helps policymakers implement short-term safety measures. Using Bayesian Poisson regression, this study analyzes factors contributing to the occurrence of crashes involving older and non-older pedestrians on road segments in Madrid, Spain. The results indicate that different factors affect the occurrence of crashes for all pedestrians versus older pedestrians specifically. Traffic crashes involving all pedestrians are affected by leisure points of interest, bus stops, and crosswalk density. Older pedestrian traffic crashes are influenced by population density, the presence of trees and trash containers, and contour complexity. Proposed measures include relocating trees and trash containers, modifying bus stops, and adding crosswalks and traffic lights. This paper also shows that these countermeasures, aimed at creating age-friendly streets for older pedestrians, are not expected to worsen the road safety of other pedestrians.