PrintOver the past 50 years, walking and biking as modes of transportation have declined dramatically in the United States largely as a result of urban sprawl. However, in the past decade, we have begun to see a resurgence of interest in these modes of travel, driven in large part by millennials.
The Alliance for Biking and Walking is an association of bicycling and walking advocacy organizations in North America. They currently have more than 220 member organizations across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In 2016, the Alliance published a report benchmarking the status of bicycling and walking in the United States. The report has been published every two years for about the past decade. Funding for the effort comes in large part from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In March 2016, Christy Kwan, the interim director of the Alliance gave a podcast which touched on some of the highlights of the report.
To address the increased interest in walkable and bikeable communities, planners use GIS to assess current conditions and to identify and prioritize needed improvements. Dr. Mike Lowry from the University of Idaho gave a presentation in 2014 where he described the concepts of bicycle level of service and bikeability and reviewed some of the GIS tools he has developed for analysis in this area.
Walk Score and Bike Score are two GIS applications currently owned by the Seattle based residential real estate company, Redfin. These applications are designed to help people assess the walkability and bikeability of a house they may be considering. They both implement priority algorithms to calculate a score from 0 to 100. Bike Score, for example, takes the following characteristics into account in deriving a score.
- Bike lanes
- Hills
- Destinations and road connectivity
- Bike commuting mode share
GIS is also leveraged by walking and biking enthusiasts, largely through the use of mobile applications such as STRAVA, to track performance and share route information with others.
Watch these two TED talks given by Jeff Speck, a city planner, urban designer and walkability advocate. The first, titled The Walkable City, was given in September 2013 and the second, titled 4 Ways to Make a City More Walkable, was given in October 2013.
If you would like some more information on this topic, you may want to take a look at a December 2016 report published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) titled Creating Walkable and Bikeable Communities.