A survey on evaluation of pedestrian safety in main urban arteries: the case of Yeni İstanbul Caddesi̇ (Konya)

In many cities today, motor vehicles are one of the most important factors of traffic jams, traffic density, air pollution, and pedestrian crashes. While pedestrian transportation has the biggest share of urban transportation in the cities before the industrial revolution, its importance started to decrease as cars entered the city. Automobile-oriented urban development policies have caused the cities to expand in an uncontrolled manner and made it difficult to provide pedestrian transportation. For this reason, the necessity to include applications that consider pedestrians in residential areas and city centers has emerged. In many contemporary cities that focus on people, pedestrian priority approaches are predominantly included in transportation planning policies. Ensuring pedestrian safety is one of the main elements of pedestrian transportation priority. This study aims to examine the results of automobile-oriented transportation policies and practices in the main arteries in terms of pedestrian safety. Within the scope of the study, Yeni Istanbul Avenue, which is one of the most important arteries of Konya City with six lanes, divided and sixteen km length was selected as the sample area and examined for pedestrian safety. Within the scope of the stated aim, after the conceptual and theoretical background of pedestrian safety on urban roads has been revealed, a survey interview has been conducted besides analytical and visual analysis of the study area. When the analyzes and the results obtained within the scope of the survey are examined, it is seen that the transportation decisions applied in Yeni Istanbul Street are automobile-oriented and cause problems in terms of pedestrian safety.