Clarity and consultation in road design can bring consensus
Relatively simple, low-cost infrastructure changes can improve perceptions of safety and fairness in shared spaces across user groups, according to a study from Dublin’s Economic & Social Research Institute.
The study, published this month in Nature’s NPJ Sustainable Mobility & Transport, tested whether simple design changes can change how people perceive a range of shared spaces, including bus stops, crossings, cycle lanes and roundabouts. Involving a representative cross-section of 1,600 adult road users, ESRI examined whether perceptions differ across road users, and whether people who are more worried about travelling in shared road spaces respond differently to these changes.
The study innovated by used an AI-assisted digital design tool to generate realistic representations of infrastructure interventions across a range of existing shared road spaces in Ireland. This approach enabled manipulation of design features to test responses, while still providing a controlled yet realistic test of the designs.
Participants viewed images of six shared road spaces in Dublin and were randomly assigned to different design versions. These included the existing layout or AI-generated versions with interventions such as bollards, improved signage, clearer lane markings, removal of parked cars, and redesigned roundabouts with dedicated walking and cycling infrastructure. Participants rated each space for perceived danger, fairness, the likelihood that a driver or cyclist would yield, and expected injury severity in the case of a collision. Analyses compared ratings across designs from the perspectives of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers separately, while controlling for demographic factors.
By collecting detailed information on participants’ everyday travel behaviour among a large nationally representative sample, the researchers examined how perceptions differ across road-user groups and whether interventions that improve perceptions for pedestrians are similarly effective for cyclists and drivers. Most previous studies have instead focused on single user groups.
The study adopted a multidimensional framework of perceived risk to measure perceptions, distinguishing affective responses (e.g. worry), cognitive assessments of the likelihood of a collision, and evaluations of the severity of its potential consequences. It is an approach that has been successfully applied to other risk domains but not to perceived safety in shared spaces, and enabled researchers to parse intervention effects across risk components.
ESRI found that perceptions of safety and fairness were often aligned across different types of road users. For example, interventions such as bollards at left turns across cycle lanes and removing parking adjacent to crossings were consistently rated as safer and fairer by pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. These findings suggest that pedestrian- and cyclist-focused designs can improve perceptions of safety and fairness without diminishing driver acceptance.
The study concludes: “Simple design changes can make shared road spaces feel safer and fairer, especially when they unambiguously show who has priority and physically separate different road users…testing designs in advance and considering the views of different road users can help when planning these spaces. While changes in how safe people feel do not always lead to changes in behaviour, they represent an important step and may encourage more active travel, supporting healthier and more sustainable communities…good design can align perspectives rather than divide them.”
Study: Perceptions of safety and fairness in road spaces shared by pedestrians, cyclists and drivers
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