Top pedestrian concerns in Canada mapped on WalkRollMap.org

Abstract

Walking is a healthy, sustainable, and economical form of transportation or recreation. Yet in North America walking is not always accessible, safe, or comfortable. A challenge to creating quality pedestrian environments is lack of data on what barriers exist and how barriers vary across communities. Our goal is to characterize pedestrian barriers and concerns at the microscale level. We analyzed 2,588 reports of hazards, missing amenities, or incidents from WalkRollMap.org, a crowdsourced webmap of barriers to walking or rolling. We assigned themes related to actionable infrastructure interventions and summarized data by location, walkability, street type, and characteristics of who reported it (age, gender, and self-reported disability). Most reports were related to crossings (45%), sidewalk quality (29%), and the volume and speed of cars (13%). Reports were more common in more walkable places (likely related to exposure) and on major roads. People living with a disability reported sidewalk concerns at a higher rate than others, while people over 75 years of age were more likely to identify issues related to the volume and speed of cars. Cities should prioritize risk reduction interventions for pedestrian road crossings and sidewalk improvements, especially on major roads in amenity dense walkable places.