Resource information
"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.
