Understanding perceived safety and travel behaviour in shared spaces

Expanding from the work on Speed and safety evaluation of shared spaces in NSW, this project will explore how traffic conditions, design quality, and user perceptions interact to influence safety and travel choices. By integrating objective and subjective data within a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) framework, it will deliver practical insights to support the implementation of the Design of Roads and Streets (DORAS) framework and the NSW speed zoning standard.

The findings will help practitioners identify where design interventions can improve user confidence and safety, particularly for vulnerable road user groups, and guide the delivery of safer, more inclusive, place-based street environments across NSW.

Participants

• Transport for NSW
• University of Technology Sydney
  

Project background

This project applies Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine how street design, traffic conditions, and user perceptions interact to influence travel behaviour and safety outcomes in shared road environments across NSW.

By combining objective data such as vehicle speeds, crash rates, and street typologies with subjective survey responses regarding perceived safety, comfort, and environmental quality, the project aims to deliver a comprehensive and system-wide understanding of how people experience and navigate shared streets.

The project builds directly upon earlier work conducted through the UTS Shared Spaces research program, which aims to provide a framework for evaluating how design characteristics relate to shared street performance.

It also extends insights gained from the iMOVE #6-040 Speed and safety evaluation of shared spaces in NSW project, which offered a broad assessment of how speed and safety outcomes vary across different types of shared environments. These initiatives highlighted the need for more detailed modelling approaches that consider the relationship between design, perception, and behaviour.

With the growing use of shared space principles through planning and design frameworks such as Movement and Place and the Design of Roads and Streets (DORAS), there is an increasing demand for evidence that connects design objectives to real-world safety outcomes and changes in travel behaviour.

Traditional assessment tools, like crash statistics or user surveys, tend to examine these outcomes separately, which can obscure the complex relationships between road design, user confidence, and transport mode choice. This project responds to that challenge by using SEM to identify both direct effects, such as how infrastructure affects crash rates, and indirect effects, such as how design influences perceived safety and in turn affects how people choose to travel.

The approach also takes into account the diversity among users, recognising that age, ability, gender, and preferred travel mode can significantly influence how individuals respond to the same street design.

The intended outcome is to develop and test a SEM that maps the key pathways affecting perceived safety and travel behaviour in shared street environments.

The results will measure the relative influence of design quality, traffic speed, and crash risk, and will identify how these relationships vary across different user groups. The overall goal is to provide practical and evidence-based recommendations to inform the implementation of DORAS and to assess the viability of lower area wide local street speed environments within the NSW Speed Zoning Standard.

In doing so, the project will contribute to the creation of safer, more inclusive, and better-performing shared streets throughout the region.

Project objective

Develop and test an SEM framework to map the key pathways affecting perceived safety and travel behaviour in shared street environments.

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!