Rail commuters will walk farther than you think

People are willing to walk farther than is commonly believed, at least to reach rail transit, researchers at San Joseph State University say in a new report. “Conventional wisdom among planners has been that pedestrians in the United States will only walk a quarter to a third of a mile for any reason, including to access transit,” the research team says in a study released by the Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Studies, in the university’s College of Business. On the contrary, participants in the study — which surveyed transit users in Portland, Oregon, and the San Francisco Bay area — walked a median distance of 0.47 miles to their transit stop, according to authors Marc Schlossberg, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Katja Irvin, and Vanessa Louise Bekkouche. The willingness of nearly half of rail commuters to walk a half-mile or more should be kept in mind by transportation and land-use planners, the authors say. Designers of transit-oriented developments should provide “pedestrian infrastructure” such as sidewalks and pedestrian-scale design “within a larger radius than previously assumed,” they say. A critical factor: make sure that pedestrians have direct routes. “Perhaps the key to increasing the number of walk trips is not to design pedestrian environments full of amenities such as benches, tree cover, awnings, and wide sidewalks — although there is no doubt those assets can greatly enhance the pedestrian experience — but rather to prioritize giving people places to walk … without any major barriers to walking,” the researchers conclude. “Grid street patterns are a good choice because they provide direct routes (as well as route choice),” the study suggests. “If the grid has very long blocks, planners might want to consider adding mid-block footpaths.” The report, “How Far, By Which Route, and Why? A Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference,” is available on the web.