Feasibility study on walkable city through implementation of car-free zones in Georgetown, Penang using spatial analysis
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Gui Win Way
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Abstract
Motorised vehicles nowadays have added enormous convenience to human beings. They
allow us to journey far distances in comfort which has caused us to rely heavily on them
in traveling. Our excessive dependence on cars has caused the domination of vehicles on
roads, and this has brought about various issues to the cities which encompass
congestion, street safety, and environmental problems. The introduction of the walkable
city will change the travelling mode of people which sequentially help to reduce the
number of cars on the roads. To support a walkable city, car-free zones may be designed
and established throughout the city. This research studies the feasibility of implementing
car-free zones in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia. The principle of walkability is
identified and presented as criteria in the spatial modelling of car-free zones. These
criteria are generated as series of spatial maps that are consequently used in the spatial
overlay process to produce suitability map that shows preferable areas to be designed
car-free. The result of the study has established three (3) selected preferable areas as car
free zones. The spatial comparison was made between the proposed car-free zones and
the superblock model, i.e. a case study from Barcelona’s Superblock project that have
similar objectives and aims of study. It is found that the car-free zones model has some
degree of similarities that ensures its work functionally. In addition, the percentage of
increase in pedestrianised streets in Georgetown is also determined. Then, the network
analysis is performed to determine the effect of car-free zones on the travelling route,
distance and time. From the results, it is found that every localised traffic has a longer
travelling distance due to the change of route to bypass the car-free zones. Yet, the
travelling time sometimes is reduced due to the roads that the traffic has been diverged
to allows a higher travelling speed. Overall, the increase in travelling distance ranges
from 12.88% to 174.92%, while in travelling time ranges from 0.29% to 119.40%.