Page 170 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Coronado, José María. Moyano, Amparo. Romero de Ávila, Vicente.
Rodríguez Lázaro, Francisco Javier. Ruiz Fernández, Rita.

countryside and in the cities. In June 2017, there were 302 results when searching walking
tracks across the city of Toledo. All tracks were checked one by one rejecting those that were
too short (shorter than 1 km) or too long (longer that 10 km), as many of these were tracks
following rural trails outside of the city. Some tracks were rejected as they were not passing
through the historic city center, but the modern neighborhoods of Toledo. Also, some tracks
uploaded several times by users were only considered once. Other tracks were not used as they
belong to other cities but had Toledo as a keyword (i.e. some tracks in Madrid passing through
the Toledo Street). After filtering all the tracks, only 90 were selected for the research.
Subsequently, all tracks were imported to a GIS program. As wikiloc filters tracks eliminating
errors like reducing the number of points, it was not necessary to make corrections in the tracks.
When a track is imported to GIS, the program finds a list of points that must be converted into
lines to be able to make density measurements, counting how many lines pass through the cells
of a grid (Zheng, et al., 2017). As GPS precision varies between 5 and 10 meters, several grid
sizes were checked, finally adopting a grid of 40 x 40 meters.

In order to assess the pedestrians’ paths between the HSR station and the historic city core,
two itineraries have been identified from the results of GPS tracks analysis. The origin of the
itinerary is obviously the HSR station, and the end was located in the different historic gates
where the tourist enters the walled city.
The itineraries are then divided into sections (links) and nodes. The nodes are the street
crossings and other points susceptible to introduce discontinuities to the itinerary (i.e. detours,
disorientation, etc.), and the sections are the homogeneous stretches between the nodes which
usually correspond to street blocks. Sections and nodes have been separately assessed.
For each node, three main data have been collected: legibility, level of detour, and accessibility.
Concerning legibility, the follow through in a node can be legible, not legible, or not legible but
solved with tourist indications. The level of detour (D) is calculated as the increase of length in
the itinerary imposed by a street traffic crossing or any other obstacle. Lastly, the point will be
accessible is the width is enough and the curb is adapted.
For the sections, several indicators have been used to quantify the quality of the footpath, the
internal band and the external band, all of them in a scale ranging from 0 to 5. The footpath
width will have the maximum value (5) when the width is over 5 meters, while it would be
zero if there is no footpath at all. The footpath maintenance was assessed in a qualitative way.
The quality of the internal band has a value of 5 in parks, squares, and high quality residential
blocks with commercial activities in the ground floor, 4 in residential blocks with commercial
ground floor, 3 in blocks with only commercial uses or only residential blocks, 2 in blocks with
single family houses or public facilities, and 1 for industrial activities or parking lots, and 0 in
empty plots. Transparency is measured considering the density of entries, windows and other
openings in the buildings in the block. Similarly, the permeability is measured as the density of
entries in the block.
The quality of the external band is also assessed in a qualitative way, with a value of 5 for parks,
squares or pedestrian streets, 4 for green spaces which separate pedestrians from traffic, 3 for
slow traffic streets with parking places or any kind of protection band, 2 for fast traffic streets
with parking places or any kind of protection band, 1 for slow traffic streets without protection
band, and 0 for fast traffic streets without protection band. Finally, the presence of street trees
(T) is also measured, using the distance between trees, with a value of 5 when trees are closer
than 7 meters, 1 when the distance is longer that 21 meters, and 0 if there are no trees at all.

Each indicator has been schematically outlined ranging from 0 to 5 following the same
criteria, producing three possible assessments: red (poor), yellow (adequate) and green (good-
excellent). The different itineraries are compared among them by means of an aggregate star
graphic. However, the itinerary may vary a lot along sections, and the aggregate measures of

168 360.revista de alta velocidad