Enhancing walkability/rollability audit tools to address qualitative measures for accessibility

Introduction

As accessibility legislation and active transportation policy become more prevalent across the country, Canadian municipalities will need a tool to evaluate walkability/rollability as a vital component of accessibility in the built environment. Existing walkability indices often overlook qualities of street infrastructure—such as curb cuts and shading—in part due to the labour- or computation-intensive data collection processes required.

Methods

We piloted a method of evaluating two factors of street quality identified as important for accessibility—curb cuts and shading—as part of neighbourhood-level walkability/rollability assessment in Halifax, Canada. We rated a sample of over 2000 road segments using Google Street View (GSV). Then, we identified areas with highest need of walkable/rollable infrastructure by cross-referencing the average neighbourhood-level scores and concentration of older adults and children. Lastly, we calculated the walkability scores based on a conventional method with and without the two factors for comparison.

Results

Curb cut quality was generally low across the neighbourhoods, including some newer suburbs. Shade scores were higher in more established neighbourhoods with more mature tree canopies, as expected. Addition of the two factors had a notable effect on the scoring for several neighbourhoods, suggesting that some neighbourhoods may be lower-performing (i.e., less walkable/rollable) than the conventional scores would suggest.

Conclusions

The rating provided a more thorough picture of neighbourhoods in need of walkable/rollable infrastructure improvement. Our methodology can be a cost- and time-effective way to collect data required to monitor the progress on accessibility in the built environment that municipalities may adopt.