Walk Urban : Demand, Constraints, and Measurement of the Urban Pedestrian Environment

"Overall support for the pedestrian environment," or walk ability, has grown increasingly important as the world urbanizes and motorized modes threaten to displace or constrain travel on foot. This concern encompasses virtually every aspe...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Montgomery, Brittany, Roberts, Peter
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2014
Subjects:
AIR
BUS
NMT
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/04/9731875/walk-urban-demand-constraints-measurement-urban-pedestrian-environment
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17421
Description
Summary:"Overall support for the pedestrian environment," or walk ability, has grown increasingly important as the world urbanizes and motorized modes threaten to displace or constrain travel on foot. This concern encompasses virtually every aspect of the pedestrian experience. Walk ability takes into account the quality of pedestrian facilities, roadway conditions, land use patterns, community support, security, and comfort for walking (Litman). Each of these facets of the pedestrian environment impacts the use of walking as a primary mode of transport. The complexity of the urban pedestrian environment naturally lends itself to micro-level analysis to locate the need for improvements; however, to gain an overview of a city, it is necessary to develop macro-level indicators that can identify the general state of the pedestrian environment. While these indicators cannot diagnose all walk ability problems, they can give a sense of how one urban area compares to another in similar circumstances and they have the potential for becoming an influential aspect of World Bank urban infrastructure diagnosis. Urban Transport indicators are being reviewed as one component of the current Transport Results Initiative which is led by the World Bank's central Transport Unit.