Listening to Pedestrian; What are the Inuential Factors on Bridge use?

Background: Pedestrian bridges are safe tools for street crossing. Bridges structural characteristics, locating and also pedestrian perception and attitudes may affect their bridge use behavior. The aim of this study was to identify the factors inuencing use/non-use of pedestrian bridges in Tabriz, Iran. Methods: Using cross-sectional approach, we have conducted a study in Tabriz, 2019. Through a pilot study data and Cochrane formula, the sample size was estimated to be 360. Sampling was done using simple random sampling method. Pedestrians around two types of the bridges with/whiteout escalator were included in the study. Sample allocation was done equally among bridges. A valid questionnaire (CVI= 0.78, α=0.75) was used for data collection. Data was analyzed using SPSS 21. Results: Totally 358 people were participated with an average age of 29±11.6 years. More than 72% of the participants had driving license and about a quarter of them had a crash history. Nearly 10% declared that they use pedestrian bridge sometimes or never. About 43% believed that bridge using is necessary only in crowded streets. Locating issues including bridge distance from zebra lines and pedestrian destination, lack of escalator, bridge darkness at nighttime and pedestrian perception of bridge safety were the main barriers to use bridges. Having a driving license and education level were signicantly associated with pedestrian bridge use behavior (p<0.05). Conclusions: Designing pedestrian bridges using artistic principles will create more sense of safety and positive perception which will facilitate bridges utility. Future developments in pedestrian safety initiatives should consider effective countermeasures which inuence pedestrian safe behavior such as bridge use.

time saving were reported as in uential factors by pedestrian to use overpasses [13][14][15][16]. Bridges structural characteristics such as color, lightening, scenic and safety vision were reported as factors dis/encouraging its usage [10,17,18]. Rasanen et al (2007) in a study in Turkey, reported that individuals who have frequent visit of business centers, are less likely to use bridges. Moreover, they indicated bridge use behavior as a habit [17]. In a qualitative study in Iran, pedestrians risk perception, adherence to social behaviors and existence of physical barriers in street was introduced the in uential factors to use bridge [18]. As bridges construction is a costly intervention, special attention should be paid on in uential factors on its utilization and effectiveness, such as road and bridge characteristics and human factors.
Regarding, this study was aimed to investigate the in uential factors on pedestrian bridge usage in Tabriz, Iran.

Methods:
Design and setting This was a cross-sectional study conducted in Tabriz, in 2019. Tabriz, as the capital city of East-Azerbaijan province, is the 6th populated city in Iran with a population of more than 1550000. It is the biggest city in Northwest of Iran.

Study tool
An adapted questionnaire was used for data collection. Questionnaire items were extracted from literature and then its validity was investigated by experts (n = 15). Validity of each item was rated based on 3 criteria including relevance, necessity and clarity by experts (Table 1). Experts' comments on each items content also were considered. Pedestrian were invited to participate in the study in bridge sites by questioners. First study goals were describe for individuals who accepted to participate, then they lled the questionnaire. The study was approved by ethical committee on Tabriz University of Medical Sciences.

Data analysis
Descriptive analysis including frequency, mean and standard deviation were used to describe the data.
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used for data normality investigation. Chi-square test was used for investigating the relation between variables. Data analysis was done using SPSS 21.

Results:
Totally 358 people were participated with an average age of 29±11.61 years. About 36% were female and 37% have BSc level of education. About a quarter (25%) of participants have a crash history. More than 56% of participants declared that they did not have personal car while 26.8% of them said that they did not have driving licensure. Moreover, majority of participants (74.4%) did not have motorcycle driving history. Participants' demographics are presented in Table 2.
Most of the participants (35.5%) declared sport as they cause of walking followed by going to work (23.3%) and shopping or doing affairs (19.9%). Nearly 10% of participants expressed that they use pedestrian bridge sometimes or never. In contrast, 44.5% said that they always use pedestrian bridges to cross the road. Only 4.2% of participants declared that they have mobility problem.
Interestingly, about 29% of participants said that use of pedestrian bridges, did not provide their safety. Moreover, 43% of participants believed that using bridge is necessary only in streets with high speed driving. Using bridges to cross the streets creates safety sense in 85% of the participants while 12.7% of participants said that they feel safe when they cross the street without bridge and zebra line. About 18% of participants declared that using pedestrian bridges leads to waste time. Figure 1 shows the barriers of bridges use by Tabriz pedestrians. Based on chi-square test having a driving license was signi cantly associated (p<0.03) with use of pedestrian bridges as individual with license were more likely to use bridge. Moreover, education level were also signi cantly associated (p<0.002) with individuals bridge use. Accident history, gender, cause of walking, having personal car and mobility problem were not associated with bridge use behavior.

Discussion:
The results revealed a variation in pedestrian preferences and perceptions leading to use/ not using bridges. Locating issues including bridge distance from zebra lines and pedestrian destination, lack of escalator, bridge darkness at nighttime and pedestrian perception of bridge safety were the main barriers to use bridges. Having driving license and education level were signi cantly associated with bridge use behavior.
Pedestrian bridge locating is a vital factor in its utility. The results showed that bridge distance from zebra line <50m and pedestrian destination>50m was acted as bridge use barriers. Wu et al study (2014) results revealed detour distance negatively in uence bridge use behavior [19]. Moreover, bridges distance from legal or illegal crossing routs was introduced as factors affecting bridge use/not use [10,20]. This becomes more prominent when individuals are in hurry and they think that using bridge will waste their time [21,22]. Individuals in hurry are more likely to not use bridge to cross street [16]. In Oviedo-Trespalacios et al. (2017) study, 47% of participants who did not used bridge, believed that with using bridge, they waste considerable amount of time [20]. In our study, about 18% of participants declared using bridge lead to waste time. Time-saving were also reported as a bridge use barrier in previous studies [13,15,23]. Bridges with escalator/ elevator are more likely to be used by pedestrian. Rasanen et al (2007) in a study of ve bridges in Ankara, Turkey, reported the highest usage rate (63%) was related to bridges with escalator [17]. Installing escalator was introduced as a solution to increase pedestrian bridge use rate in literature [16,17,20,23]. Selecting proper interventions to change bridge use behavior should consider cost-effectiveness indicators and also socio-cultural characteristics. Moreover, development and extension of online services such as online stores etc. in form of an intelligent city, could decrease travel demand and eventually improve pedestrian safety.
Bridge safety and pedestrian perception about its safety is another factor affecting bridge utility. Safe feeling while using bridge was introduced as one of pedestrian behavior predictors [17] which is similar to our results. Counterintuitively, results of a study in Colombia showed that pedestrian perception of safety arising from bridge use was not related with their bridge usage rate [20]. Fear of bridge height was revealed to signi cantly affect pedestrian behavior in past studies [16,17,24]. In our study, only 12.8% of participants declared fear of height as a barrier of bridge use. Construction of a pedestrian bridge is an engineering intervention improving objective dimension of safety. To promote bridge utility, subjective safety also should be considered to create safe feeling in pedestrian. Impressive design, proper lightening and using bright colors in bridges induce safety for users.
Having a pervious accident experience was not associated with pedestrian bridge use behavior. This result was consistent with previous studies reported that involvement in accident dose not impact bridge use rate by pedestrian [10,22]. Conversely, a study in Colombia concluded that in urban roads with high speed limit, pedestrian who have past experience of injury, were more likely to use bridge to cross [20]. Some literature declared that pedestrian bridge use behavior is habitual than a cognitive process [17,20]. It was discussed that previous behavior could predict pedestrian future behavior as a habit [25]. This type of behavior puts pedestrian in greater risk of injury. Interventions on increasing pedestrian awareness of their behavior negative consequences and creating negative public sphere of not using bridges will affect their attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms and their perceived behavioral control (PBC) which based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) are latent predictors of pedestrian behavior intention [26,27].
Effect of past behavior and experiences on pedestrian behavior is an issue of tra c psychology which needs to be more explored in future studies.
Injury prevention education is one of the common and effective interventions to improve pedestrian safety. However, education should be compatible with pedestrian behavior intention predictors. Considering socio-cultural and environmental characteristics of community, in line with using various educational methods such as group-work, simulator or virtual reality and peer-education will lead to more positive outcomes. Moreover, considering effective construction countermeasures, land usage and locating, weather condition and tra c volume will increase the likelihood of bridge use by pedestrian.
However, designing a safe pedestrian network, especially in city crowded areas, would decrease risk of injury for pedestrian.

Conclusions:
This study examined pedestrian perception towards pedestrian bridge use barriers. Locating issues including distance from zebra lines and pedestrian destination, lack of escalator and pedestrian perception of bridge safety were the main barriers to use bridges. Future developments in pedestrian safety should consider effective countermeasures which in uence pedestrian safe behavior such as bridge use.

Limitations:
This was a self-report study and this kind of data potentially are criticized for under/over estimation. All of the participants were over 15 years old. As a group of pedestrian, child and teenagers under 15, might be a study group for future studies.