PONE-D-21-08683

Factors influencing walking trips. Evidence from Gdynia, Poland

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wolek,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Lubos Buzna, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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The authors would like to thank Alicja Pawłowska (City Office of Gdynia), Iwona Markesic,

Paulina Szewczyk (Spatial Planning Bureau of the City of Gdynia) and Dean Edmunds for their

support in preparing the paper.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Overall, this is a clear, concise, and well-written manuscript. References are relevant and have covered recent studies. The methods are generally appropriate. Overall, the results are clear and specific comments are as follows:

• Authors should further elaborate on what is the difference between the service accessibility as a part of Factor1 and accessibility to leisure activities as a part of Factor4? Why authors did not consider accessibility to leisure activities as a part of people’s assessment of accessibility and comfort?

• Authors claims that weather conditions also recorded on each day during the data collection period. Why these important data have not been considered as an influence factor in data modelling?

• In line 198, authors state “The overall evaluation of the pedestrian space in the centre of Gdynia is positive” that it is not clear which study they are referring to? It should be also mentioned here that following sentences in line 199 and 200 stand alone and there is no connection with the pervious part.

• Results in Table3, can be structured in a better way. Authors should further elaborate on presentation of sample description in Table3.

• In line 333 this sentence “The evaluation of time and distance of the walking journey is influenced by the perception of safety influences (Ralph et al., 2020)" can be removed as it has not been taken into account for evaluation of people’s perception of safety of walking and road traffic safety .this sentence has been also replicated in line 349.

Overall, this manuscript can be accepted after applying the requested revisions and proofreading.

Reviewer #2: - More suitable title should be selected for the article. Title should decrease to 10-12 words.

- The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.

- It is suggested to present the structure of the article at the end of the introduction.

- A flowchart should be added to the article to show the research methodology.

- The major defect of this study is the debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument.

- More suitable title should be selected for the table 3 instead of “Sample characteristic (n=934).”.

- It is suggested to add articles entitled “Guo et al. Weather Impact on Passenger Flow of Rail Transit Lines”, “Habeeb and Talib Weli. Relationship of Smart Cities and Smart Tourism: An Overview” and “Abdulrazzaq et al. Traffic Congestion: Shift from Private Car to Public Transportation” to the literature review.

- It is suggested to compare the results of the present research with some similar studies which is done before.

- Page 16: the following paragraph is unclear, so please reorganize that:

“The third factor brings together the assessment of pedestrian crossings. Interestingly enough, all aspects of the crossings end up in the same factor: the waiting time, green light phases, traffic lights and safety aspects. In general, they are perceived rather poorly by the respondents – only 2% of respondents perceive pedestrian crossing waiting time as excellent.”

- Much more explanations and interpretations must be added for the Results, which are not enough.

- Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results, as indicated previously. Please revise your conclusion part into more details. Basically, you should enhance your contributions, limitations, underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results and future study in this session.

- “Notation” should be added to the article.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Factors influencing walking trips. Evidence from Gdynia, Poland

PONE-D-21-08683R1

Dear Dr. Wolek,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Lubos Buzna, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The newly added sentences in the revised manuscript are quite often very long. So, is very difficult to understand the content with a fast reading of the paper(e.g. line 410-415, line 562- 571). Thus the manuscript needs to be proofread by a proofreader before it can be published.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No