BackgroundDifferences in the neighborhood food environment may contribute to disparities in obesity.ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to examine the association of neighborhood food environme...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25472610.pdf

Neighborhood Food Environment and Walkability Predict Obesity in New York City

Walking distance by trip purpose and population subgroups.

http://tram.mcgill.ca/Research/Publications/Access_JTG.pdf

Measuring non-motorized accessibility: issues, alternatives, and execution

Potential influences on explaining walking distance from home to access public transport are investigated, including trip and demographic characteristics and public transport supply. In Sydney, Australia, people walk farther to the train than to the bus, the distributions of walking distances are different for each mode, and the trip and demographic characteristics of train and bus users are different. Given the decision to walk to public transport, demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income, and labor force status and trip characteristics such as trip purpose, time of day and week, fare and ticket type, and trip duration are not significant in explaining walking distance to each mode of public transport. The mode of the public transport trip is the most important determinant of walking distance, reflecting the different supply and spacing of each mode. For instance, there are many more bus stops than train stations. The differences between train and bus users suggest that accessibility initiatives for public transport might not be the same for each mode.

/pdf/explaining-walking-distance-to-public-transport-the-2haasws0s1.pdf

Explaining walking distance to public transport: The dominance of public transport supply

This paper reports on a survey of pedestrian trips to transit that examined the trip lengths and route choices made by people walking to five rail transit stations in California and Oregon. In highly motorized countries such as the US, policy-makers are beginning to recognize that shifting some travel from auto trips to walking trips can help the country achieve important policy objectives such as combating obesity and reducing the air pollution and oil dependency that result from auto use. However, researchers know very little about pedestrian behaviour and the role of the built and aesthetic environment in influencing pedestrian trips to transit. As communities wrestle with the interconnected issues of obesity, sprawl, and quality of life, planners need to understand how far Americans will walk to transit and the environmental factors that influence them. This survey of 328 pedestrians walking to rail stations, primarily on weekday mornings, found that they were willing to walk an average of half a mile to the rail station and that minimizing the distance walked was the most important factor influencing their choice of route. The people surveyed also frequently mentioned safety factors as important in route choice. Aesthetic elements of the built environment, on the other hand, were rarely mentioned as important route choice factors. The paper concludes by using these survey findings to recommend strategies that planners, designers, and policy-makers can use to design successful transit and pedestrian-oriented developments.

/pdf/how-far-by-which-route-and-why-a-spatial-analysis-of-48feeqcmiy.pdf

How Far, by Which Route and Why? A Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference

There is an increasing interest in community walkability, as reflected in the growing number of state and federal initiatives on Safe Routes to School, the new concern over a national obesity epidemic (especially in children), and a wide range of policy initiatives designed to convince travelers to switch from auto trips to more environmentally sustainable bicycle and walking trips. In each of these cases, policy makers recognize walking as a key mode of travel and believe that increasing the number of walk trips is a key goal. Despite the seeming simplicity of the goal, we know very little about how far people actually walk or about how street design affects people’s willingness or capacity to access their desired destinations by walking. This paper reports on a survey designed to answer two primary research questions related to the topic of pedestrian behavior: (1) How far do pedestrians walk to light rail stations? (2) What environmental factors do they say influence their route choice? The paper concludes with five major findings about our study population at five rail transit stations in the San Francisco Bay Area in California and in Portland, Oregon: (1) Pedestrians walk considerably farther to access light rail stations than commonly assumed. (2) Pedestrians believe that their primary consideration in choosing a route is minimizing time and distance. (3) Secondary factors influencing route choice are safety and, to a lesser extent, attractiveness of the route, sidewalk quality, and the absence of long waits at traffic lights. (4) Pedestrians vary considerably in how accurately they estimate the distance of a regular walk trip. (5) Asking survey respondents to trace their walking route on a local map is an effective research technique.

How Far, by Which Route, and Why? Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference

This study surveyed pedestrians and their walking behavior in Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area. Pedestrians who walked to five different rail stations were surveyed regarding how far they walked, their preferences in choosing a walking route, and the environmental factors that influenced their route choices. The survey results were analyzed in order to assess the pedestrians' perceptions of how far they walked and why they chose their route. In addition, an environmental audit was conducted of the streets and intersections aroudn the stations. Five key findings about pedestrian behaviors and preferences are reported. In addition, the study presents a number of recommendations related to the methodology for doing such detailed pedestrian analyses.

How Far, By Which Route, and Why? A Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference

Research on walking and the built environment is a fairly recent area of inquiry, accelerated over the last ten years by an increased interest in the relationship between urban form and public health. As the research has progressed, so has the interest in developing ways to collect data at a very fine scale – in essence, to be able to collect data at the streetscape level and link this data to transportation behavior. This paper discusses the development and implementation of a GIS-based pedestrian audit tool that allows users to collect data in electronic form using a hand-held computer (i.e., a Pocket PC or Personal Digital Assistant). While the authors, in general, believe that such tools may be useful for better understanding the relationship between the built environment and pedestrian behavior, the tools may be unnecessarily complex and unfocused. Specifically, such walkability audit tools could be improved by: 1) applying unique sets of walkability measures to different types of walking environments; 2) perhaps focusing auditing activities on major streets and intersections only (e.g. do not audit neighborhood streets where possible); 3) include subjective as well as objective measures of the streetscape; 4) verify the accuracy of digital base maps before widespread implementation; and 5) continuously evaluate whether the simpler technology of pen and paper would be preferable alternatives. That said, the authors conclude that appropriately applying GIS-enabled pedestrian audit tools can be an efficient way to collect and quickly analyze pedestrian infrastructure characteristics so that planners, practitioners, policy makers, and community members can make more effective decisions on behalf of walkability.

Assessment of GIS-Enabled Walkability Audits

Introduction Research on walking and the built environment is a fairly recent area of inquiry, accelerated over the past ten years by an increased interest in the relationship between urban form and public health. As the research has progressed, so has the interest in developing ways to collect data at a very fine scale--in essence, to be able to collect data at the streetscape level and link this data to active transportation behavior (Schlossberg 2007). However, the lack of quick and cost-effective tools for collecting block-by-block data about the streetscape has prevented more widespread research and application of such tools. This paper discusses the development and implementation of a GIS-based pedestrian audit tool that allows users to collect data in electronic form using a handheld computer (i.e., a pocket PC or personal digital assistant (PDA)). In a recent article on visualizing and measuring walkability, Schlossberg suggested looking forward to new technological approaches. In theory, tools that could allow for detailed, GIS-enabled data collection about pedestrian environments on handheld computers would allow planners to better understand the relationship between specific characteristics of the built environment and their relationship to either overall walking within an area or preferences for walking along one route or another. Once this relationship between the walking environment and walking behavior could be established, then specific recommendations to improve walking conditions could be made to policy makers, planners, transportation officials, and other decision makers could be made to improve conditions for walking. This paper discusses the development and implementation of such a pedestrian audit tool and evaluates its promise for use in future projects. The larger project within which this tool was developed examined correlations between aspects of the built environment with the actual route choices that people make when walking from home to their nearest transit stations. The variables within this GIS-based audit tool were adapted from existing research literature and from other pedestrian audit tools, namely the Pedestrian Environment Data Scan (PEDS) developed by Dr. Kelly Clifton and Andrea Livi at the University of Maryland and Dr. Daniel Rodriguez at the University of North Carolina. This paper, however, will not focus on the types of data collected; rather, what follows is an evaluation of using this technology as a way to gather more detailed and nuanced data about walkable environments. CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND As researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have become increasingly interested in the relationship between the built environment and physical activity, recognition of tools that appropriately measure urban form at a pedestrian scale has also increased. Perhaps the best-known and utilized tool in this area is an environmental audit instrument called SPACES, a comprehensive tool that helps inventory the characteristics of and along a roadway segment (Pikora, Giles-Corti et al. 2003). The authors categorize different factors of a walking environment into five classifications: (1) functional (physical attributes of the street), (2) safety (characteristics of a safe environment), (3) aesthetic (elements such as trees or gardens), (4) destination (relationship of neighborhood services to residences), and (5) subjective. Moudon and Lee (2003) focused their work in a similar area, but dedicate more time to developing a conceptual framework for measuring walkability to help direct future research efforts. To develop their framework, they performed an exhaustive review of more than 30 published methodologies and inventorying tools that have been developed to assess walkability. They outlined a theoretical framework called the Behavioral Model of Environments (BME) that seeks to account for personal, physical, and internal responses factors that may explain the connection between individual pedestrians and their walking environments. …

Katja Irvin

Papers

How Far, by Which Route, and Why? Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference

How Far, by Which Route and Why? A Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference

How Far, By Which Route, and Why? A Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference

Assessment of GIS-Enabled Walkability Audits

An Assessment of GIS-Enabled Walkability Audits