Encouraging walking, assessing the effects of change.

The UK Government's white paper on the future of transport, (A New Deal for Transport, DETR 1998a), identified a need to make walking a more viable, attractive and safe option. The intention is to require local authorities to give more priority to walking by including strategies to encourage walking in local transport plans. Examples of good practice have been publicised and a range of appropriate measures to encourage walking have been identified. These include measures for which the outcome can be quantified, such as providing more pedestrian 'road' space or reducing pedestrian waiting times at crossing locations, and measures which are more difficult to quantify such as improving footpath maintenance and cleanliness. In the long term the success or otherwise of measures to encourage walking will be assessed by any changes in the number and lengths of walk journeys. In the short term, infrastructure changes to encourage walking will be competing for funding with demands to support other transport modes for which the outcome benefits can be demonstrated by economic appraisal. The move to develop walking infrastructure will only be successful if the benefits of improvements can be clearly demonstrated. In the United States the Highway Capacity Manual defines pedestrian levels of service and provides a starting point from which an audit of pedestrian measures can be developed. There is no corresponding evaluation system available in the UK. This paper reviews the requirements for a methodical comprehensive description of the pedestrian's physical environment and considers ways in which this can lead to the development of ranking and audit assessments of pedestrian routes. Ranking systems for other engineering applications such as risk assessment and environmental impact assessment are considered alongside walking auditing systems developed in the United States. Based on this review, a system for application in the United Kingdom is proposed and its application demonstrated by considering typical pedestrian networks in the Cardiff area.