Walkable Communities director
leads pedestrian audit of streets

 

Dan Burden, executive director of Walkable Communities, a nonprofit organization seeking to promote walkability as the cornerstone of a successful, vibrant community, pointed out successes and shortcomings of the Texas A&M campus and adjoining streets to students who joined him on a stormy March 31 for a pedestrian audit hosted by Texas A&M’s College of Architecture.

Burden’s visit, which included an afternoon lecture, was sponsored by the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center’s Graduate Certificate in Transportation Planning program. Burden’s lecture, later that day, kicked off the an ongoing symposium examining contemporary issues in transportation hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning.

Burden walked to the Langford Architecture Center from his room at the Hampton Inn, located on Texas Avenue just north of its intersection with University Avenue; he didn’t think much of the journey’s pedestrian experience.

“Coming over here, I would rate all the walking conditions from an F-minus to maybe a C-minus,” he told a group in the Langford A atrium that had assembled for the audit. “There are no good walking experiences between the two points.”

“It’s not just the lack of sidewalks,” he said. “There’s no shade, the buildings are not oriented correctly; they’re suburban in form. Suburbs don’t work for walking.” 

He took the group south on Ross Street from the Langford Architecture Center as lightning flashed, thunder rumbled and chilly, gusty winds buffeted the walkers.

“We’ve never had an audit canceled due to weather,” said Burden, undaunted by the threatening conditions as he unspooled his tape measure to gauge Ross Street’s width.

“I would call this immensely walkable,” said Burden as the group stopped at the intersection of Ross and Spence streets, the weather continuing its threatening ways. “It’s not the highest on the scale,” he said, but he commended the canopy of trees, the widths of the sidewalk and the streets.

Burden then led the group north on Spence Street and was talking about the benefits of 90-degree street parking when pea-sized hail began to pound them; the walkers fled to one of the engineering buildings on Spence Street to wait out the storm.

He then led the group to the Northgate area, starting at the busy intersection of Spence Street and University Avenue, evaluating the streets’ widths, sidewalk widths, signage, signal light patterns — everything a pedestrian or bicyclist encounters at the intersection.

Burden was not impressed by University Avenue as he and the group walked west through the Northgate area.

“When I look at this road, I cannot imagine why you have more lanes than you need,” he said of the six-lane road bisected by a left-turn lane. “There are dozens of examples throughout North America where four-lane roads are outperforming this road night and day because they put a lot of design thought into every intersection,” he said.

He noted there were long stretches of time where there weren’t any moving cars on the street.

“The cars are just waiting for a long traffic light cycle that shouldn’t be that long,” he said. “By following some of the conventional engineering practices of the past, we’re actually dampening the ability of this road to do what it was designed to do,” he said.

Later in the day, Burden presented “Considering Urban Transportation in the 21st Century: How Contemporary Economic, Demographic, and Housing Trends will Influence the Design of Our Communities and Transportation Systems” at the Wright Gallery in Langford A.

Walkable Communities, in partnership with Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Inc., a planning, urban design, transportation, landscape architecture and environmental services firm, aims to help large and small cities, neighborhoods and school districts to improve their walking conditions.

See a video of the pedestrian audit on YouTube:

 

- Posted: May 4, 2009-



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