Customer Mobility Patterns on a Redesigned Shared Street in a European Port City: Evidence from Gdynia’s Starowiejska Street

Across Europe, cities are redefining the function of streets in city centers, transforming them from spaces primarily serving car traffic into vibrant, liveable public spaces. These transformations reflect a broader shift toward sustainable urban development, aimed at fostering local communities, enhancing walkability, and reducing the environmental impact of transport. Gdynia’s Starowiejska Street—one of the key service-oriented streets in the port city center—underwent a redesign in 2023 that prioritized pedestrians, local services, and social interaction. This article examines customers’ transport preferences when visiting retail and service establishments along Starowiejska Street, analyzing differences by business type and the perceived role of parking availability. The study draws on a field survey conducted in May 2025 among 588 users of the street, complemented by inferential testing, binary logistic regression, correspondence analysis, and k-means cluster analysis, providing both descriptive and multivariate evidence on customer mobility patterns in a shared street environment. The results confirm that the street functions primarily as a local, pedestrian- and public transport-oriented destination, with walking (46.6%) and public transport (28.2%) dominating access modes. Statistically significant associations between travel mode, visit frequency, and business type were established through chi-square testing. Cluster analysis identified three distinct customer mobility profiles—Local Regulars, Occasional Visitors, and Car-Oriented Visitors—reflecting differentiated accessibility needs across the street’s commercial mix. Because the survey was conducted on a single day in 2025, two years after the redesign and without a pre-redesign baseline or a comparison street, the study describes the current, post-redesign accessibility pattern rather than demonstrating a change caused by the redesign. Within this scope, the case of Starowiejska Street illustrates how the organization of access to local services and public space is associated with everyday mobility choices in a way that appears compatible with environmental and economic sustainability goals. The redesign also illustrates, descriptively, how a more inclusive, pedestrian-oriented built environment can broaden accessibility for diverse user groups—including older residents, caregivers, and people with mobility limitations—whose needs are central to universal design thinking. The study contributes to the growing body of research on sustainable urban mobility by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between accessibility, street design, and local commerce in a single European port-city case. The research was supported by Gdynia Maritime University and conducted within the framework of the EU Horizon project SPINE—Smart Public Transport Initiative for Climate-Neutral Cities in Europe—situating the findings within a broader European context of mobility transition.