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Indicators of Community Walkability

There are many aspects in the pedestrian environment that contribute to the overall concept of a walkable community. A pedestrian friendly infrastructure is desirable because it allows residents to use walking as a common mode of transportation, increases opportunities for physical fitness, permits children to walk to school, attracts window shoppers to local businesses, offers increased safety to pedestrians, creates a pleasant street atmosphere, and encourages social interaction among neighbors.

However, gaps in pedestrian infrastructure can serve as barriers to walking. A community may exhibit poor walkability if too many physical, social, or psychological barriers exist to its walking residents. Such barriers to walkable communities can include:

• Lack of sidewalks or poorly maintained sidewalks
• Absent or poor street lighting
• Large physical distances between residents and common destinations (grocery store, cleaners, schools)
• Sidewalks without curb cuts to allow access
• Intersections with poorly timed signals or the crossing of large physical distances
• Transit stops that provide adequate shelter from the elements
• Lack of trees or streetscaping
• Constant trash, broken bottles, and mud
• Fast moving traffic without traffic controls
• Careless drivers
• Areas of perceived high crime

Community Walkability can be measured using several available methods although walkability surveys are the most common. Residents can walk through their community with a walkability survey which measures the pedestrian level of service in that area. This survey tries to maintain equality in its rating scale between communities so that different levels of walkability can be measured against one another. The published walkability checklists of the US Department Of Transportation (pdf) and Federal Highway Administration (pdf) each serve to measure communities in several different categories before giving them an overall walkability assessment.

Walkers Win! worked with the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS) in October, 2001 to perform a community walkability survey in the Humboldt Park area. Residents, activists, and planners all walked together in determining the local barriers to walkability as well as discussing the importance of walkability to the Humboldt Park community.