Measuring Walkability

Understanding and measuring factors that effect walking behaviour

Everybody walks. Walking is an indispensable mode of transport in cities, be it to access public transport, to go shopping around the corner, or simply for a leisurely stroll. But while very elaborate tools and guidelines have been set in place for planning roads and public transport, many cities have started to embrace walkability only recently and lack sophisticated planning tools to measure it.

The collaboration between the external pageUrban Redevelopment Authority (URA)call_made and Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) explores what people value when walking in Singapore’s dense city centre and tropical climate, to enable planners to better plan for walkability.

The quality of the urban environment has tremendous impact on how people perceive walking and directly influences their decision to go on foot or take a car or other means of transport.

The Engaging Mobility team in FCL combines detailed information on pedestrian environment with observations of actual pedestrian behaviour and dedicated surveys to find out what affects walking behaviour and how it is affected.  Summarised findings on this part of the research can be found in this set of external pageslidescall_made.

To apply these findings in planning practice, a new ArcGIS add-in was developed. The Pedestrian Accessibility Tool allows planners to assess how walkable Singapore is today and to evaluate various plans and strategies to improve walkability in the city centre and beyond.

As a case study, the tool was applied to evaluate the impact on walkability when an overhead bridge is replaced with an at grade crossing in the city centre of Singapore. As the animation below indicates, the tool allows us to quantify and visualise how much the accessible area will increase as a result of this intervention.