Dan Burden, co-founder of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, Inc., along with Ian Lockwood and Fabian De La Espriella of AECOM, conducted walking audits in three cities over three days in a recent visit to the Portland metropolitan area. After completing the walking audits, the trio shared their findings in an evening event and made recommendations for both short- and long-term implementation strategies.
With a small group of community members, business owners, elected officials and city staff, Burden, Lockwood and De La Espriella led tours in Beaverton, downtown Hillsboro and Southeast Portland along select routes in each city, working from a list of walkability issues compiled in advance.
"Walking audits are one on-the-ground tool to help communities focus on actions that maintain and enhance neighborhoods and make downtown areas more walkable, livable and safe," said Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington who attended the final presentation made by the group. "By involving local business owners, planners and elected officials in the walking audits, we're tapping some of best sources of ideas for taking action with community investments that promote livability, attract new business and help communities thrive."
With community stakeholders as the experts on their main streets and downtown areas, the team led each group through a series of scenarios as they walked, exploring solutions that can be used to inform future decisions about street and sidewalk design.
Burden's multi-discipline background in street design, traffic calming, public safety, bicycling and greenways, combined with Lockwood's training as a traffic engineer provided a holistic vision for creating healthy, pedestrian and bicycle-friendly communities.
In Beaverton, walkers considered how an active rail line and two state highways carrying over 30,000 vehicles a day bisected the downtown area, creating a barrier to safe pedestrian access. An overall lack of street connectivity and the absence of bike lanes that often pushed cyclists onto sidewalks and into conflict with pedestrians also topped the list of walkability issues they shared with Burden.
Community members discuss pedestrian facilities in downtown Hillsboro with Dan Burden and Ian Lockwood.
"It was extremely interesting and valuable to walk our downtown core with knowledgeable, experienced, and creative experts," said Marc San Soucie, Beaverton city council president. "They offered positive and incisive critiques of our pedestrian facilities and experience, along with a healthy dose of innovative suggestions for ways to improve our overall transportation network. I would recommend this kind of audit - and these experts - to anyone involved in planning for an urban core. Two thumbs up!"
Participants in the downtown Hillsboro walking audit considered converting the downtown streets (Main and Lincoln, along with the numbered streets) back to two-way streets and looked at simpler solutions to improving pedestrian safety like widening sidewalks.
In Southeast Portland, community members, business owners, city staff and elected officials spent their two-hour walking audit in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood, on Southeast Powell Boulevard between Southeast 122nd and 130th avenues.
Walkability in this neighborhood is challenged by a lack of sidewalks on wide, multi-lane arterials with high traffic volumes and an absence of pedestrian crosswalks. The addition of poor street connectivity, which reduces the opportunities for pedestrian and bicycle travel on calmer local streets, puts greater pressure on arterials for all modes of travel.
Ian Lockwood of AECOM describes traffic calming techniques near Southeast 122nd Avenue in Portland.
In a presentation made after the last walking audit to an audience of planners, business owners and elected officials, Burden and Lockwood shared their findings from all three audits. By improving walkability, they suggested, communities reward the "short trip" that helps create the sense of place that comes from pedestrian-friendly streets and sidewalks.
Dan Burden is an internationally recognized authority on bicycle and pedestrian issues and Smart Growth. He pioneered the idea of feet-on-the-ground urban planning through on-site walkability audits. His "walking classrooms" help stakeholders share their concerns and goals for a site while seeing it together through a real-time lens.