Welcome everyone and thank you for joining PARC today for our
seventh webinar of this year's speaker series.
Today we will be hearing from Paul Young, who will be sharing
information on evaluating walking environments
using audits.
Before we get started, I wanted to provide you with
a quick overview of PARC for those of you who may be
unfamiliar with the organization or with the services we offer.
PARC is the Centre of Excellence for physical activity promotion
in Ontario. We are funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term
Care, and managed by Ophea. We were established in 2003 and
provide support to physical activity promoters working in a
variety of sectors across Ontario.
Ophea is a not-for-profit organization that champions
healthy, active living in schools and communities through
quality programs and services, partnerships and advocacy, and
is led by the vision that all children and youth value and
enjoy the lifelong benefits of healthy, active living.
While PARC and Ophea work with different audiences, Ophea has
more of a focus on children and youth while PARC works
across the lifespan. Both organizations compliment each
other in highlighting the shared responsibility of creating and
maintaining healthy schools and healthy communities.
PARC supports physical activity promotion across the lifespan
from prenatal physical activity, on to early years, and then
right up to older adults. PARC supports physical activity
promoters working in: Public Health, Recreation,
Sport, Fitness, Community and Family Healthy and
as well as Non-Governmental Organizations.
PARC provided professional learning and networking
opportunities, quality resources and consultation services to
enhance the capacity of physical activity promoters across Ontario.
PARC services include: Consultations and referrals,
which can be done in person, by telephone, or email
and can included expert consultation support,
links to existing resources, strategies and approaches,
support in problem solving, and up-to-date and
relevant information.
PARC also provides both free and fee-for-service provincial and
regional workshops and training opportunities.
These opportunities are available both in person and in
a webinar format.
We are in our fourth year of professional speaker series
which you are participating in today, and this includes
eight webinars with a research to action focus on physical
activity and intersecting health promotion topics.
You can keep up-to-date with our speaker series announcements
by joining our listserve which is called PARC connects and
and it goes out weekly.
PARC has a variety of resources available to assist you in
promoting physical activity and our resources are available
in both English and French, electronically and hard copy
and are free of charge at parc.ophea.net.
The PARC website is bilingual and includes an events page
for physical activity related events and a life-stage selector
to help you easily find resources and professional
learning opportunities which apply most to you.
All of our services can be found on our website and we
encourage you to browse our website for upcoming webinars.
As I mentioned earlier, our webinar today is being presented
by Paul Young. Paul is an urban designer and health promoter
at Public Space Workshop
As a landscape architect and urban designer, Paul has
designed streets, trails and parks for both public
and private sector clients.
He is also a health promoter at the South Riverdale Community
Health Centre in Toronto, where he works to engage people
in planning for a healthier community.
Combining the two skill sets, Paul conducts workshops and
planning studies to improve walking, cycling,
and accessibility. His work includes policy review, planning
and design with a focus on active transportation and
stakeholder engagement.
Thank you, Paul, for being here today.
>>Thanks, Sarah, for that introduction.
And, good morning everybody.
Happy Friday. It looks like a beautiful day for a walk.
This is a sitting talk. We're going to go to about
11:30 or 11:40.
I'd like to leave some room at the end for discussion
because I know, looking at the list, many of you.
And I know you all have experience promoting walkability
and I'd like to hear. I think everyone could benefit
from hearing from your experiences.
Thanks again, Sarah and Kristin.
for inviting me to share my experiences this morning.
And thanks to PARC and Ophea for the invitation.
Just by way of an outline, I thought I'd go through several
broad categories here. The first part: what is an audit exactly?
What are talking about?
And then why would you want to consider an audit?
What are people using audits for?
And then the third part, sort of the meat of the presentation,
is more our experience with using three audit tools:
The iCANwalk Walkability checklist, which has been
around for a while now, in use in Southern Ontario.
The second one, Toronto's Active City Audits, which is more in
it's infancy. We were piloting that audit tool.
And then the third one, Markham Walkability Audits,
which was very specific and geared towards some
built improvements.
As Sarah mentioned, I'm a landscape architect and I'm a
health promoter. The landscape architecture side brought me in
touch with how streets are constructed,
what the design process looks like and during that
time in our training we were always encouraged to spend as
as much time in the place before you start designing it.
Some people went as far as actually sleeping in the place
to get a feel for, maybe a park space, before making any
design decisions.
So, really, the audit piece is kind of moving in that direction
It's about getting out to experience the place,
learn about what's going on, on the ground.
While designing streets and parks, that really kindled
my interest in active transportation.
And, now it's become more of a movement. It's really great to
see how much interest there is in this topic area.
I also got very interested in the engagement process
because I found it was typically the public that was
asking more for the good stuff like sidewalks and
street trees, and benches and green spaces.
So I was interested in looking at how best to get
those voices into the design process.
So I'm also, as Sarah mentioned, a health promoter
and much of the work I do as a health promoter is
engaging people in planning communities.
So, you've heard lots about me. I'm interested to hear
who's joining us today, and I think you may be as well.
We have a poll here, so if you would tell us
the sector that you're coming from.
Sarah, were there categories that people could select?
>>You can just type in whatever your--
>>Oh, I see. Okay.
>>So, it's short answer. We see some public health,
health promoters, health planners.
>>Geographic education
So it looks like lots of folks from public health,
which is great to see.
Ten, fifteen years ago if we were going to talk about
street design and walkability, I don't think we would have had
much participation from public health sector, but it's
great to see more and more interest and I think
the health connection now is becoming more and more apparent
with the research that is emerging.
Often we'll see participants from a whole range of sectors
as well that are interested in the walkability piece.
Sometimes we'll get people from planning, from recreation,
from the education school sector,
even from economic development and tourism.
They're recognizing the connection between having
a walkable community and boosting the local economy.
And, of course the transportation sector.
They're very much gearing up for more and more interest
in the walkability, cycling, accessibility piece.
Trying to figure out how to make it easier to use those modes
and shift from the car into walking, cycling transit.
I think it's interesting that it wasn't really anyone's job
before this to look after walking and cycling but I think
in the more recent years, most municipalities now have cycling
co-ordinators, trails planners, active and safe routes to school
co-ordinators, transportation demand management staff
which is also very encouraging because it is now part of
people's jobs to look after the walking and cycling agenda.
I know you're all muted, which can be challenging,
but I'd like to open up the dialogue as much as possible.
If you want to use the chat box to ask questions as we
go through. I'll be trying to keep an eye on that,
and I'll prompt you at certain locations as well.
We've done a number of workshops across the province.
in communities of different sizes.
Sometimes you talk about urban design and people's
hackles go up because we're often in rural communities
and they don't consider urban part of their
community make-up.
But, usually we find areas in towns or cities
that are more or less urban in that they were built
a hundred years ago. They're a little more compact, they're a
little more dense, and they have mixed uses.
So it's that typical, Southern Ontario town
where you've got shops on the ground and maybe
one or two or three stories of apartments above that.
So, a nice mix of uses.
In rural communities, we're often looking more
at things like trails as a great place to start
for the active transportation piece.
In the cities, we're looking at traffic calming,
providing cycling and walking routes and parkettes.
But the biggest challenge we find is in the suburban context.
We're in between the urban and the rural and most of it's been
built when the car became the dominate
mode of transportation.
That's were we end up doing most of the audits.
So, we get to see some pretty challenging places.
The audits we're going to talk about this morning
are in three areas. One is in the Niagara region.
The second one is in Toronto, out in the outer suburbs.
And the third one is in Markham, which is a little bit
further out of the Toronto area.
We have another poll. I'm interested to know
what kind of experience you may have with walkability
or active transportation.
The first one is not sure how the built environment can
support active transportation. So this may be new to you.
You may be somewhat familiar with it. Or you have experience
improving conditions for walking and active transportation.
Or maybe the last category, you've actually done some
walking audits.
It looks like our poll is more or less finished.
We've got a mix. This is not new to any of you, the topic of
walkability and active transportation, which is
great to see.
And then we've got a fair number of people, almost half,
who've had a fair bit of experience with walkability
and conducting audits.
I look forward to sharing some of your experiences as well.
What is an audit? This is the definition that comes from
the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Centre.
And they describe it as "... an unbiased examination or
evaluation of the walking and biking environment."
And why do we do it? It's "to... identify concerns for
pedestrians and cyclists related to the safety, access,
comfort, and convenience..." of those users.
So the obvious question is,
once we've done the audit,
how can we make conditions better. So the audit process
typically leads to improvements.
I've laid out five steps here, that we typically do.
The first one is to set out the objectives, like why are we
doing this audit in the first place? That's very important
because that will start to shape how the audit looks.
The second piece is selecting the audit area.
We will often look for destinations and origins,
main walking routes,
and then concentrations of vulnerable road users
So, children, seniors...
and that will start to dictate where you're going to audit.
The third part is going to be designating a route.
So, we want to cover off a route that will include
things like schools, senior centres.
The second drawing there, or the air photo with the circles
on it, that's sort of a rough sketch of us identifying some of
the higher density living environments.
You can see the towers there.
This is near Danforth and Victoria Park, Toronto.
And then we're identifying streets that connect those
origins and destinations. And that would start to set out
our walking route.
The fourth part is understanding the neighborhood
and that we do by looking at maps.
You can get a lot of information off of a simple thing like
a Google map or an air photo.
It's really amazing what's available now online
and data now, you can start to look at
things like crash statistics, if you have them available.
And then, key informants. It's great if you can get people from
that neighbourhood who live or work in the area, to explain
a little bit about the area that you're auditing,
because when the audits unfold, the only take, typically,
a couple of hours or so. You're missing big chunks of the day.
In once case we were told to go early in the morning to watch
the kids moving to school,
so we could see how that unfolded.
So, it's good to get local insights when you're doing the
audits and to know what to look for.
Then the fifth part... having some kind of a framework
to do your review with is really important.
And that's typically what we refer to as the tool.
So you can see this simple checklist
in the middle of the screen
and we're looking for evidence based frameworks,
because the research is telling us we know what's needed
to support walkability and it looks like most
of you are quite familiar with that. It's safe routes,
a mix of uses, providing comfort, that kind of thing.
And then there's a little picture of us doing the audit
with a group of participants. And, most of the audits we've
done, this far anyway, have been in pretty cold temperatures.
I find pencils work better than pens.
Why would you want to audit?
This is a report that came out recently,
designed to move active cities. It's out of the UK.
There's lots of research emerging, seems like everyday,
on the benefits of walkability
and active transportation. That's changed quite a bit.
Five or eight years ago there wasn't quite as much,
but it's great to see this type of thing coming out on a fairly
regular bases now.
There's great videos available now, streets blog,
Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation, Canada Walks...
all sorts of resources which I'm sure you're familiar with.
This one is from the UK.
The UK has been somewhat of a leader on this issue.
If anyone's familiar with the walk 21 conference series,
they're spreading the gospel all over the world.
Why audit? Well, there's a number of reasons.
If you're looking to improve active transportation,
here are some of them that are contained in that report.
So, environment, yes. So a third of our greenhouse gases comes
from transportation.
Safety and health. Most of you are from the health sector.
You know about the physical activity levels. You know about
the importance of utilitarian travel
for shorter trips and the huge potential we have there if we
can shift people out of there cars and into walking
for those shorter trips.
And we know that people want to walk and bike more.
But it's also looking at the economy, which
I mentioned earlier.
Looking at transportation and how to reallocate road space,
to improve the economy. So, looking at
downtown revitalization.
These are some of the arguments that can be made.
I'm not going to dwell on this, but just to say that there's
lots of research available and there's lot's of reasons to
improve conditions for walking and active transportation.
This is an air photo of Toronto.
You can see some of the more well known locations.
York University up in the top left,
and the golden mile is part of Scarborough, some of
you may be familiar with. Down in the bottom is the
University of Toronto. And the photo just shows the difference
in urban form. And in the blue chat box there you can see
the point is that physical supports
for walking and for active transportation will vary
between neighbourhoods.
The question is, why is that?
I don't know if anybody had any thoughts they want to
throw into the chat box.
Also, in the downtown area of Toronto, and in most downtown
areas, the mode split will be more in favour of walking and transit
if you're fortunate enough to have transit.
Oops. I've just got a blank screen.
Okay, we're back.
In downtown Toronto, the mode split is around a third.
So thirty percent car, thirty percent transit, and
thirty percent biking and walking.
That drops off dramatically as you move outside of the
downtown core.
In the suburbs, it's more around seventy percent car,
twenty percent transit and ten percent biking and walking.
The idea here, this is a map, a series of maps on how
Toronto has developed over the years. And, most of the areas we
are auditing are in the bottom two maps and they were built
between 1945 and 1970.
And, as you can see, most of the city was built during that
time period.
And that's a time period where we were building primarily
for cars, moving people around in cars.
That's where we're doing a majority of our audits,
which I think I mentioned.
This is an image from the Neptis Foundation
showing some of the road patterns that have unfolded
over the years.
Again, we're looking primarily at 70's to the 90's.
The images on the left
are parts of settlement areas that have been built
when the car wasn't dominant.
So, pre 1960's. And the images on the right
are your typical suburban development patterns.
And, that's where we have the biggest challenges with walking
and as many of you know, the sort of dead worm
wiggly spaghetti road pattern is more challenging to people
who are walking. Most of the transportation is done by
driving and cars are more or less forced out
onto the major arterial roads.
And that's how we travel between communities.
So, the grid pattern offers better connectivity.
You can pick up these kinds of patterns by looking at maps and
if you're interested in auditing a certain neighbourhood,
these are going to give you some indication about some of the
challenges. So the audits are all about measuring walkability.
There are a number of ways to do this. One of the more popular
tools now is Walkscore.
That has been used primarily by the real estate industry
to determine whether or not a home or a neighbourhood
is walkable. And it's primarily about proximity to routine
destinations. So, how close a home may be to
things like a school or shopping or transit.
So, the higher the Walkscore, the better.
This research just came out. There's a link below.
If you're interested in it. But it basically says that
people living in highly walkable neighbourhoods
were more likely to report utilitarian walking.
And residents of very car dependent areas were
significantly more likely to be overweight or obese,
then those in, what walkscore calls, walkers paradise areas.
Really what they're saying is the higher the Walkscore,
the higher the rate of utilitarian walking.
So, it's an interesting way to measure walkability at a glance.
You can go on the Walkscore website and explore that.
There are other indicators as well. You can start to look
at mode split. So, how many people walking?
That's information that would typically come out of Stats Can.
Crashes, injuries, fatalities... those indicators or metrics can
tell you where to focus your attention.
And then simply going out and watching people.
That's a great way to measure walkability. If you don't see
anyone, chances are it's not a very walkable environment.
That kind of work was pioneered by people like William White,
Jian Gale, Project for Public Spaces. They're do some of that
work as well now.
So, why audit?
There's a bunch of reasons we mentioned.
You know, you're looking to improve the walking environment,
Is there anyone who's considering an audit?
If you are, I'd love to hear a little bit more at the end...
how, you're thinking to approach it. Or maybe you've
done one and you'd like to share some challenges or successes.
The audit is a way of reviewing existing conditions.
You could be looking at, and in these cases, we're looking
mostly at challenging conditions, so the bad stuff,
but you could also be going out to look at what is working
as well.
There may be an incident or a complaint that people want to
respond to in some way. If you've had a crash, or
an injury or death. Unfortunately that's more of a
reactive approach but it does trigger action and that may come
in the form of an audit.
One municipality was interested in locating
a signalized crossing for pedestrians and there was some
public debate about which street to put that crossing at.
So an audit can help make that decision a little bit
less political and more objective.
You may have some environments like this in your communities.
The audit can go beyond, there's listed a number of objectives
that you may have in doing an audit, from raising awareness to
to engaging people. Simply evaluating the environment,
what's working, what isn't working, you may be able to
gather some political support. In one case, Thunder Bay, we
took some of the elected leaders around in a school bus with some
community leaders to help show first hand what's going on out
in the community.
You may be looking for enforcement. There's issues
around speeding.
And then the last one, in Markham's case,
they were looking to do some retro-fitting of the area,
getting some shovel ready projects to
make those improvements.
Building sidewalks, improving connections, that kind of thing.
These are some of the reasons we were asked to do the audits,
and you may have your own objectives as well.
In a nutshell, I kinda like this image because it captures a lot
of the potential changes that we could be looking for.
On the left side you've got a fundamentally car-dependent
urban form and on the right side it moves more towards a walkable
bikeable environment.
And we're fundamentally trying to move from one to the other.
It's often called sprawl repair. There's a book that came out
in the last couple years basically setting up a number of
scenarios like this to show you what kind of interventions
can be made in the built environment.
And, this is the big challenge that we face in North America.
All of the suburban areas that we've built, pretty difficult to
move around in if you're on a bike or on foot.
So in terms of the audit tools, some are a little more technical
and need time to unfold and I'm going to give you a list of
some of those tools that are available
We took inspiration from some people like Dan Burden, who
I'm sure many of you are familiar with the work that he's
done. He was a photographer and he was really adept at
looking at environments and started to bring this idea of
a pedestrian audit into the streets planning process.
And it's a great tool for engagement awareness raising
and that's primarily what he's been doing and
we've been doing.
And the last piece is that audit tools, they need to be evidence
based and they're tending towards quantitative
with some qualitative measures but really trying
to be objective.
So I won't dwell on these.
There's a number of options there for you to explore.
There are more, surreyfruitstoschool.ca has some
audit tools available as well. They're not listed here.
Doing all sorts of great work across Ontario
around school travel planning.
Those focus primarily on the schools while these are more
broadened scope looking at the community in general.
So this is where we get into comparison of three of
the tools.
Why did we pick these ones? Well, these are ones that we've
actually used.
Some of them are self-guided, some of them are health, well
they're all health-based, and some of them identify
as capital improvements, so, ways to fix up the environment.
And in all these tools, I think it's important to mention that
as you move through the audit process, it's really
important to emphasize the perspective of someone who
may be a more vulnerable road user.
So, we're thinking about children. So if you can
put yourself in the shoes of a child or a senior
who may not be able to move as quickly.
Or, in fact, we've had experiences where we were in
wheelchairs just to try and experience the setting
from the perspective of someone who is moving around in a chair.
Here's the iCANwalk Walkability Checklist.
It's self-guided so you can download it, print it out.
The interesting part about this one is
you have an option to mail it in.
The public health unit was initially taking these and then
collating them and sending the information back to the decision
makers. So, you might get fifteen, twenty, thirty of these
checklists and you start to see patterns emerging from
the checklists and those are sent on to the decision makers.
There often a component of a workshop so
we can bring out this kind of data showing that people
are engaging in the issue and here are the priorities they
are identifying.
It also provides a contact list so that you can start to move
towards an advocacy group if you would like.
This is what it looks like.
And this is a piece of it. So it's fairly simple. I like it
because it's accessible, easily understood,
and you don't require a lot of professional expertise.
And, in terms of the objectives, I think primarily what we've
experienced is that it's a great tool for engaging people
and raising awareness.
It does have an evaluation component,
and it moves in towards the political support.
So, really it's about generating some energy to make those
changes that will come later.
And it borrows from the notion of community based research.
So, you're out asking people to contribute to this.
This is an effort done by a man named Dave Meslin
who you may have heard speak recently at a health conference.
And it's people getting together to say hey, let's go out and
do some traffic counts. Let's go out and look at the environment
together, using a checklist to evaluate that setting.
In the Niagara region, they now have at least, maybe more
now, seven active transportation committees that are active
out of their twelve municipalities.
And these committees stem from, they included a
foundational piece where they were using these checklists to
get people engaged and active.
Now, the committees are conducting outreach
and education, commenting on policy and capitol projects,
advising on trails plans,
and on accessibility issues.
The second tool is a little more involved,
Active City Audit tool.
It recently won an award from the
Ontario Provincial Planning Institute
for excellence in planning. It was developed by
Toronto Public Health Gladkey Planning DTAH,
the city of Toronto planning department and the
transportation department.
And it's part of the active city designing for health report
series that was done.
It's really connected around health and it's looking at
activity in general, not just at
walking and cycling.
And it's centred around schools, this example.
We should back up... In the 1960's tower developments
so, pretty challenging contexts to be doing the audits in.
Many of the streets look like this, so it's the
major arterials.
And this purpose of this audit was more to evaluate.
We didn't really get into the... it could be used to generate
some political support for change,
but primarily it was a scoring tool to say this is
where the neighbourhood needs the most attention.
And, I'll show you what the tool looked like.
So these are some of the settings again. We're doing
this in the Wintertime. Obviously simple things like
snow removal, signage on the sidewalk,
heavy traffic. There's no buffer between the heavy traffic
and the pedestrian. Then the image on the right.
Lots of what we call desire lines.
So, people are trying to get from one place to another.
and there are no sidewalks. So if you were in a wheelchair,
for example, this would be a pretty difficult hill
to navigate and in the rain, that's just a muddy path.
These are the types of things we're looking for.
The active city is interesting too because in incorporated
equity. So, this idea that not all neighbourhoods are the same.
So they looked at ways to identify which neighbourhoods
in the city are experiencing more challenges
than other neighbourhoods.
The image on the top right obviously is a little more
walkable. You can see trees planted in between the sidewalk
and the road. There's two lanes of traffic, and there's
a nice wide sidewalk. We've got lighting,
and a mix of uses. This is up in Markham.
So, we looked at walkability.
The audit tool was based on, it targeted neighbourhoods with
low walkability. So, those are the areas in the red.
Where those were determined, if you look at the text on the
bottom right. Looking at residential density,
intersection density, land use mix,
and the ratio of retail in that area.
So this was a complex process but basically to say that
the audits were chosen based on the
areas of highest need.
We were essentially looking at these areas.
And the black dots are the post war
towers, the apartment buildings.
The red shows higher levels of diabetes.
Just, in summary, looking at ways to incorporate equity
into your walking audit.
The Active City Audit Tool combines both
qualitative and quantitative.
It also includes professional and resident opinions.
In this case we brought in residence
for some of the audits, what we call facilitated audits,
and we piloted the tool in and around ten schools
in areas that had the highest rates of adult obesity and
chronic disease.
It was based on ten active city principles, which, there's the
report if you're interested in more details.
It's available online.
But, again, looking at some principles of proximity
to different land uses, connectivity. So, looking at
the street grid and sidewalks,
cycling routes,
the quality of the environment.
So are the spaces inviting for active living?
Are there parks and recreation opportunities nearby?
And then the last piece, equity.
This notion that not everyone has the same level
of walkability in the neighbourhood.
This active city audit tool was actually broken down into
three components. The first part, you can see Vivian out
with a clipboard there. We're looking at the setting and
looking at how people are moving around.
So, there were two of us out making observations
and then rating the setting.
The second piece, part B, was a facilitating audit.
So, we went through a similar process with stakeholders
in the neighbourhood. In this case it was a parent committee.
And the last piece, part C, was a street segment analysis.
So we did this for one of the neighbourhoods.
It's a much more detailed analysis of a
short section of street.
As I mentioned earlier, when we're developing and looking
at the area we wanted to audit this neighbourhood, but
how do we cover the whole neighbourhood? We started to
look at the destinations that people are going to, like the
school and the places their coming from,
like the high density apartments.
Then we started to map out the audit route
before we actually did the audit. And in this case
we're using some geographic information systems
to look at where the parks are located,
to look at bicycle routes, that kind of thing.
It's just another level of information that can help
you understand the neighbourhood.
And this is the scoring system that we were using.
So, you can see the chart looking at land use mix,
looking at density, transit
safe routes, which include an analysis of traffic,
pedestrian safety and comfort,
cyclist safety and comfort,
connectivity, the quality of the spaces themselves,
access to parks and recreation,
and then we looked at the buildings themselves
whether or not they had accessible entrance ways,
and then assigned a score.
So, we had some pretty challenging environments as
I mentioned earlier and these may be conditions that
you're experiencing as well were we've got streets
without sidewalks. Desire lines where people are trying to
move between destinations but there's no infrascructure
to take them there safely.
I've got a cyclist on the bottom left. Obviously that's not
a recreational ride. I don't think anyone would choose
to be in that position.
And then the bottom right is a map that you can
see clearly that there's some gaps in the trails system.
The blue line. Some of the other aspects that came up
as we audited this neighbourhood:
parks that were in disrepair. So, I'm going clockwise from
top left.
Brand new building, but the ground floor
is a parking garage.
So, some challenges around how the building was designed.
Doesn't really animate the street or offer much
in the way of a destination for nearby residence.
It's just a parking garage on the bottom.
The bottom left, lots of driveways going in and out
of parking lots. So those are conflict zones where
you put pedestrians in a more dangerous condition,
especially if the traffic's moving quickly.
And on the bottom right, another urban design decision.
A sidewalk moving in towards the left of the screen,
moves out towards the road. For some reason that the new
townhouses there were designed, and the sidewalk was pushed
out to the road, making it less comfortable for walking and
a little more dangerous, especially if you're a child.
And then we also included some recommendations.
So, looking at examples elsewhere that could be
incorporated into these neighbourhoods to make them
better places for walking.
So, the idea of introducing a mix of uses,
in a mid-rise built form.
Markets can be sort of temporary intervention
to help animate spaces and also provide access to fresh food.
There's Toronto's Mobile Food Market.
And the bottom right, just looking at some of the spaces
people have to hang out if they're waiting for transit.
It might be an entrance to a parking lot.
There are ways to make those spaces a little more pleasant
and inviting.
Another intervention looking at traffic calming.
The bottom left, if we flip the sidewalk and the asphalt strip
you would create a buffer between the traffic and
the sidewalk.
The bottom right, there's a temporary condition that was
done in Ottawa to create a safer walking route for children,
until a sidewalk gets installed.
I mentioned we also did a facilitated audit.
It was a little bit of outreach. Asking people to join in.
Then we showed people initially where we were going to walk
using a little PowerPoint presentation, then we went out
and actually did the walk.
It was freezing. I think this was the coldest day of the year,
as you can see, which is challenging to encourage
people to linger and look hard at the environment.
And then the street segment analysis was the last, more
detailed piece we did looking at this particular stretch.
And the tool that we used...
basically, the lower the score, the better the street.
And I think you're going to get copies of these slides so you
can look at these in a little more detail.
But, we're looking at average daily traffic volume,
speeds, sidewalk width,
and then we come up with a score at then end.
And then the score translates into
a colour code on the map
So you can start to see, okay, this street comes up as good
and may not need as much attention.
The little circle on there identifies
an area where you could make an intervention
to improve the conditions.
You can imagine that eventually you get a street grid
with different coloured lines and that would help
decision makes to determine where to put resources
into improvements.
The last piece on this audit tool was
we tried to identify opportunities for improvements.
So if there are any road reconstruction projects
coming up or developments that were about to unfold.
These are really things that should be put to the top
of the list because they do offer significant opportunities
for improvements. If you're going to rebuild the street,
let's do it with more attention to some of the shortcomings
that you've identified in your audit.
The Markham Walkability Audits
was done about this time last year.
We looked at five areas, in and around the city of Markham.
And we were asked to generate ideas, not just looking at the
problems but also come up with some solutions.
So, similar steps to identify the study areas
We developed an audit tool we could use that would meet the
objectives of Markham. In this case the were looking for
capital improvements. So, what kind of interventions could
they build to improve conditions?
So that was part of the audit.
We also gathered local insight on each of the areas.
We looked at maps and air photos and then we conducted
the walking audits themselves.
As I mentioned the focus was on engineering design.
This was done for the transportation department
and Markham's pedestrian and cycling advisory committee.
These are the three areas.
Lots of large shopping malls.
So, big challenges for walkers and cyclists.
This is what the tool looked like. Some of the
general categories that we were looking at:
Are the sidewalks and pathways connected?
What are the intersection crossings?
How are they supporting walkability?
Comfort level? So, shade, benches.
Accessibility and safety.
Transit supports. So, do we have shelters for people waiting for
buses, benches, that kind of thing.
Way finding and signage is huge.
Helping people navigate.
And then the last one, land use
and local population employment density.
That was something. We actually used the Walkscore tool
to estimate the land use mix.
Oh, sorry. The last one... and then we did observations
of people moving.
The tool, without going into any huge amounts of detail here,
basically we want to make sure we're covering
off all the bases.
The evidence is telling us there are a significant number of
areas that you need to identify, that you need to look at.
to determine whether or not the area is supporting walking
and biking.
So this helps people to kind of say, okay, we're going to go
look at the area. We're not just going to look at curb cuts,
We're not just going to look at benches at transit stops.
This is a checklist that helps you move through
a more orderly analysis of the setting.
These are some of the conditions. This is what the
report looks like. On the left you've got the challenge image.
So, on the top left, huge blocks with
no crossings anywhere.
So, on the right, the obvious thing is to introduce a
mid-block crossing with a pedestrian activated signal.
On the bottom images, the bottom left,
there's a lack of protected sidewalks through parking
parking lots. So there's a person...
you can just barely see, in a wheelchair. This is a
senior's centre and they're trying to get out to the street.
How can we make the sidewalks more defined for people
moving through those parking areas.
And the image on the right is an example from down the street
actually, in Markham, where they've but sidewalks
through the parking area.
We created maps to identify specific changes and
where they need to happen.
So, for example, this is what they'd look like.
Shouldice Drive needs a sidewalk.
This is a road going into a seniors building.
It didn't have sidewalks on it, so our comment is that
it should have the sidewalks.
I just wanted to mention as well, we tried to code
the comments so that they would relate to different
departments in the city of Markham.
So in transportation, for example, would be responsible
for fixing up the sidewalks.
If it's a shopping mall, that would fall to the
property owner.
And then we provide some very quick, simple diagrams
of what the solutions might look like.
So this is the condition before, and this is the entrance to the
senior's building. And then after, just really defining
the sidewalks so that you reduce the conflict
opportunities between the pedestrian and the driver.
And on the bottom right you can see a more defined walkway
going into the senior's centre.
These are not grand gestures. They're very simple.
Here's another one showing a walkway through the parking lot.
Huge parking lot, lots of room to introduce this kind
of intervention.
So the recommendations we tried to categorize the
improvements according to different departmental
responsibilities. So, we were asked to have an eye
to implement the changes. We identified some quick wins.
And then some long-term improvements
and then identified areas where we would need some partnerships.
Comparing all three audit types.
The iCANwalk Walkability Checklist
seem to lean more towards, you know it's a great tool
for engaging people, it's very accessible.
You can raise awareness very easily.
It can get a little bit... you know it moves towards change.
You're identifying issues that need to be changed.
And with the support of public health staff
collecting those mail-in surveys.
It's a really powerful tool in drawing
the decision-makers attention to those needed changes.
Basically we would have a little spreadsheet
showing how many people are interested in having
signalized crossing at a certain intersection.
It's very low cost and I think it's more of
an entry-level audit.
The second one, the Active City Audit Tool combines both
the qualitative and quantitative.
There's still a fair bit of subjectivity.
It relies a little more on professional input,
but it also incorporates the opinions of residents.
It also introduces the idea of equity. So targeting areas
of highest need.
And the last one, the Markham Walkability Audits included more
on the local insights. We took a group out there as well
to do some of the audits together.
It was a customized audit tool, so we looked at the
evidence. We looked at some of the other audit tools and we
combined those to meet the needs of Markham.
It was led primarily by professionals with a background
in planning and design.
The purpose really was to identify construction projects.
Equity and planning policy didn't factor in hugely.
We were looking at vulnerable road users
and the areas that were identified for us
did have seniors buildings nearby
so we knew the need was a little bit higher.
Planning policy didn't factor in so much.
So, a few conclusions.
The evidence based audit tools...
it's important to have that foundation because
it ensures that your audit covers off a number
of different categories that people may not have considered.
If people are fixated on introducing traffic calming,
they may not have thought about some of the other factors that
support walking.
The second bullet... it's great if you can combine both the
facilitated and the non-facilitated audits.
So the facilitated piece really does help bring in the
the other stakeholders.
And first hand, they can witness what's going on
out in the field. A lot of us get stuck at our desks
and don't get a chance to get out in the community and
look at it from the perspective of a child or of a senior.
So that's the facilitated piece.
I think it's important to include both planning and
transportation issues.
The ideas that you're going to have a number of desinations
nearby and that will really help in reducing the trip distance
for people and really making it possible to get people
out of their cars.
So transportation and planning are important to include.
And then the second last piece including equity.
Having a little bit of an analysis of the neighbourhood
beforehand to know where, for example, where lower income
groups of people who may not have access to a car...
They may have higher needs for walkability and transit.
And the scoring, the last bullet, we did have some
limitations. We were finding some challenges around the
Likard's scale and there's a little bit of subjectivity
in using those types of scales.
I want to thank you all for attending today.
And I'll open it up for discussions.
I don't know if anyone is considering an audit.
And if any of these tools would be of use.
Or if you have questions about initiating an audit
in your neighbourhood.
I encourage you to use the chat box for any of that.
Has anyone done the walking audit?
Did you find it useful?
Got a few comments coming in...
The other conclusion that I didn't put in there
was that if you can time your audits during the season where
it's not bitterly cold out.
The snow does provide an opportunity. You can see where
people are walking pretty clearly because they're making
prints in the snow. It's nice to get out in warmer weather,
especially if you're thinking about bringing the community
out for the walk as well.
So, JJBF... they're looking to have a low cost
and community based audit in greater Sudbury.
Thinking of both Winter and Springtime to consider the
Winter challenges.
Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
We did one in Thunder Bay. It was in the Winter. We used
a bus. So we had a combination of an indoor session,
with slides. So you can also do a virtual audit
if the weather's not so great. But the bus helped us to cover
a great distance and then we got off the bus and looked at
different locations.
I think in that case, they connected with the
transit authorities pubic health unit.
Joanne up there is doing some amazing work.
Got the transit authority to charter a bus
and we just moved around the city.
I can see other comments coming in,
but there not up on the screen yet.
in turns of cost, the iCANWalk audit is online
and it's just a matter of printing it out.
Very low cost.
The active and safe routes to school site has some
tool kits available as well,
free of charge,
that include an audit tool.
Could you supply some examples of intervention from
some of the studies you discussed?
Yes, so the interventions... in one case it was about
where to put a signalized crossing.
So, there was some discussion in the town
about putting it in at one location,
and I think the transportation department wanted to put
it in at another location.
The audit, I think, helped to bring those stakeholders
together to have a discussion, but it also...
that the physical audit, that going out an looking at
conditions concluded that the crossing made more sense in
one location. So, the report went through council and
they approved the crossing.
So that's more on the costly side of the intervention.
Other audits... there's sort of an in between, like a very
low-cost way of testing out an intervention.
Reconfiguring an intersection using cones.
So that you would do this with your transportation department,
but setting up temporary changes to the test them out.
Darren -"Who's suggestion was the winner?"
Oh, ha ha. That's a good question.
Was it the community? Or... I think it was
the communities suggestion... no, I think it was
the transportation department. Yup.
And I think the community, in going through the analysis,
came to the same conclusion. Initially they wanted
the intersection... there was someone who was hit
at the intersection and so they felt that that was the location
the signal needed to go in at.
But it turned out the majority of pedestrian traffic
was further South, one block South.
Darren, was that what you were asking about?
Okay.
I can see more comments coming in.
Inga, Public Health -"Ottawa Public Health is doing
walkability audits around the schools interested in improving
the school active transportation rates. We do the audits
along with staff, which helps build common understanding
around constraints." That's great!
So if anyone is interested in walkability audits around
schools, can they connect with Ottawa Public Health, Inga?
Great!
Sandra Jones - "Thanks for your comments. Additional, have the
info as to where people, students, families live.
Heat maps can better identify potential walkers and cyclists
to support a built route across a barrier."
Yeah so the idea that, Sandra, if I've got this correct,
emphasizing the need to understand where people
are living.
And in the image on the screen there you can see all
the kids crossing. There's a huge tower complex
just beyond the rail bridge.
So we were looking as well at those high density
living environments.
We know that some of those areas are a little lower income
areas and the car ownership levels will be lower and
need is higher.
So, if anyone is interested in connecting with Inga,
Ottawa Public Health around the walkability audits
at schools.
>>So for people who are typing in the the chat box
we will get to those questions or comments,
but I did want to draw everyone's attention to
the evaluation, which is in the chat box
and on the screen here. Take a few minutes and let us know
what you thought of today's webinar. That would be great.
Thank you so much Paul for being with us here today
and for sharing some of your experiences.
I know I learned a lot and I know everybody else did
as well.
So, we will stay on the line for any more questions.
For anybody that does need to head out, thank you
so much for you attendance and participation today.
We hope to see you again on a future webinar.
>>Great. Thank you.
I'm happy to hang in for a bit. I can see comments
still coming in.
And Darren's comment about open data. Yeah, it's really
great the amount of information that's out there now.
We were looking at cycling routes are one of the
more easy ones. We also have transit stops,
where the parks are.
Very helpful for getting a better feel for
what's going on in the community.
These are areas... Darren's comment about getting
demographic information. Public health units have been
very helpful in providing some of that information
so if you're connected to one that's producing summaries
of neighbourhoods and looking at demographics and at
socio-economic information.
That can be helpful. Local police departments.
If you're interested in crime rates.
The other one is crash statistics.
Those statistics are available.
It's just a matter of connecting with
your local law enforcement agencies.
I see the comment about bus stop maintenance.
Yup, that's huge. Whether it's graffiti, snow removal,
even having signage telling people information about the
routes, ideally, when the next bus might be coming.
Yes, you don't want to stigmatize areas.
I found in Thunder Bay they were able to pull together
cross-statistics and it was really great, because it
just showed you which intersections were
really standing out as more dangerous.
Stigmatizing may come up, but I think you really want to
try and acknowledge it and then try and move towards
some solutions, but it would mean working fairly close
with your partners.
It looks like, I'm not sure, but it looks like there are no
further comments coming in. Oh, Sandra Jones is typing.
I should say too, on the slides my email address is there.
paulyoung@publicspaceworkshop .ca if anybody wants to connect
with me that way. If you have further comments we weren't able
cover here, I'm happy to do that.
"Curious about your solution for a strip mall photo?"
Yes, the mixed used re-development.
So there may be solutions around strip malls
that are interim solutions. So, trying to consolodate
some of the entry points for vehicles.
Instead of, in some cases, we had three or four crossing
into the parking lot from the road.
Trying to reduce those down, so working with the property owner
and the transportation department to consolidate
vehicle entry points. The other piece would be
if there's any redevelopment that might unfold on
the strip mall and bringing the buildings up to the street
with parking in the rear or on the street
and just that whole package about creating a better
pedestrian environment with the redevelopment.
Yes, so high traffic volumes.
So ideally we get people into other modes of transportation
but the other interim solutions involve buffering people from
the higher volume street.
So ideally if you can introduce a strip.
These areas tend to have a little more land available
than in an urban core area. So if you can introduce a
strip of trees. A two metre strip of grass with
trees in it. Relatively low cost,
and buffer the sidewalk from the road.
and also provide some shade,
but that's a fairly major capital intervention.
Introducing street parking is another way to
buffer the pedestrian sidewalk from the fast moving,
high volumes of traffic.
So if there's any opportunity to introduce street parking.
I see Sandra's comment... push back from councils.
Sorry...
Yes, multi-use paths come up quite a bit especially
more in these suburban areas where people are using the
sidewalks to cycle on anyway.
Not many people are walking around.
Yes, so putting the pedestrian and the cycling together.
If you can create a wider path
so that you've got a wider area so that if people
are walking or pushing strollers, there on
a different part of the path. You can separate it with
a painted line or different materials using
asphalt or concrete.
So, kind of a minimum width would be around three metres.
Yes, because I think those arterial roads
they are the only way people can move.
The local streets tend to be less connected
in the suburban context so we really are looking at
those arterial roads. And many municipalities are
using the multi-use path to accommodate cycling and walking.
The multi-use path piece becomes much easier if you've
designated an area in either a pedestrian cycling master plan
so that when other interventions come into the street,
for example, utility polls...
That they don't put them right in the area that you could use
for a multi-use path, because on of the biggest challenges
is getting around the obstacles with the path itself.
So, if you have to move utility poles, that can really add to
cost. So if you have a plan in place when those utilities
are either re-constructed or put in,
they don't put them right in the path.
It looks like many people are leaving.
I just want to thank you once again for participating.
It's great to learn from what other people are doing.
Sandra Jones -"Examples of multi-use paths through
shopping strips.
Any examples."
Yes, umm..
Port Hope. I'm trying to remember the name
the street. Has been working on a multi-use path.
It's an East West street through the downtown core.
If you send me an email Sandra, I can try and dig it up
in the meantime.
So you can go on streetview and have a look at it.
And it's in an area of Port Hope that was developed
I think. It was an industrial area that's kind of slowly
transitioned into a strip mall.
So, we're at ten to twelve, if there's any other questions
I'm happy to hang in until noon.
Looks like we're wrapping up.
>>Yeah, we can stick around for a couple more minutes.
If anybody does have anymore questions.
>>Sure, yeah. I'm happy to hang out.
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