Report back from Walk21 International Walking Conference
Toronto 1st – 4th October 2007
Liz Thomas, Living Streets Aotearoa
The 8th annual Walk21 conference on walking and liveable communities was held in Toronto at the beginning of October 2007 with the theme “Putting Pedestrians First.” The conference attracted 400 delegates from 19 countries, including leaders from government, academia, private, not-for-profit and community sectors and advocacy groups.
Jacky Kennedy from Green Communities Canada was one of the main drivers in bringing the walking conference to Toronto. She had noted the lack of Canadian delegates at previous Walk21 conferences, and the need to bring walking higher on the Canadian political agenda, and approached the City of Toronto for their support to host the conference. The Council is developing a walking strategy, and keen council staff seized the opportunity of the conference as a way of raising awareness of walking issues in Toronto and around the country.
Papers from the Toronto conference will be available in the near future online at
Pre-conference activities
There were presentations and report back sessions from two important activities which took place in the months and weeks before conference:
A walkability roadshow involving ten Canadian communities working with eight experts from the Walk21 international team was run over a over an three week period. The participating communities were benchmarked against the International Walking Charter, and the groundwork set for them to develop walking plans and take steps to achieve real change for walking.
A Youth Forum for 13-19 year olds was held before the conference, organised by a group of thirteen young people who had worked over the summer to learn more about leadership and to share strategies for generating a stronger youth network to advocate for increased sustainable and active transport. A hundred and twenty young people attended the forum.
Pre-conference workshops
I attended a workshop led by Daniel Sauter from Urban Mobility Zurich on “Measuring Walking: Towards Internationally Standardised Monitoring Methods of Walking and Public Space.” (see paper at http://www.toronto.ca/walk21/pdf/walk21_measuring_walking_programme_and_background.pdf )
The aims of the workshop were to look at how to establish international guidelines for the collection, analysis and dissemination of qualitative and quantitative techniques for measuring walking. Having international standards would mean that data from different cities/areas/countries could be shared and compared. The International Walking Charter outlines what should be measured, what is needed now are guidelines on how to collect and analyse the data. There is already a European project “Pedestrian Quality Needs” http://www.walkeurope.org/ which aims to find common ground in the type of data being collected across twenty European countries.
The first part of the workshop looked at what should be measured – the dimensions and indicators. Speakers from Canada, the UK and USA outlined what they were measuring. This was followed by far-ranging (but rather unfocussed) discussion covering the need to measure not only the numbers of people walking but also how far, how often, and what for; the difficulties of measuring quality rather than quantity; the need to measure to justify spending; and the correlation between land-use planning and walking. In the afternoon session the group looked at categories of information which should be measured and started drawing up a matrix of the dimensions, benefits and applications.
The outcome of the workshop was an agreement that the guidelines would need to be developed through a process similar to that used for drawing up the International Walking Charter. Anyone interested in being part of the email discussion group should contact daniel.sauter at urban-mobility.ch
Inspiration
The conference opened with an inspiring keynote speech by David Suzuki. He focused on the big picture issues of global warming and climate change, and the interdependence of all living creatures in a finite biosphere. Reducing carbon emissions from transport by getting more people walking is a small but important part of the solution necessary to avert disaster. David’s book “Good News for a Change” is worth reading to find out about the many positive initiatives taking place around the world.
Benchmarking Walking
Jim Walker, the Walk21 chair, talked about the online questionnaire developed by Walk21 to enable authorities and organisations to audit their progress against their own walking targets and the International Charter for Walking. The tool was first used with London Boroughs in March 2007 and has now been extended to cover over 117 highway authorities in the UK, and some Canadian authorities.
New Zealand is developing a benchmarking initiative under the Getting There Implementation Plan, and if this was linked into the Walk21 tool, could produce useful data for comparison internationally.
Economics of Walking
The papers on economics highlighted the need for business cases to convince decision makers that more people walking instead of taking their cars has economic as well as health, social and environments benefits. Many measures for cost-benefit analyses are biased in favour of vehicles, and ignore walking components of multi-modal trips. In terms of economic development, money spent on petrol for vehicles provides the least number of jobs in a community.
The business case for the Legible London project is looking at factors such as efficient use of space – more people can be moved per metre width by walking than by other modes – access to public transport, and reduction in death and injury. A study showed that 109 journeys between Central London tube stations are quicker by foot and that more than 44% of pedestrians use the Tube map, which is not related to geographic locality, to navigate their way around London, and were unaware of the physical location of tube stations. Having better maps and wayfinding information available could transform these short tube trips into walking trips, resulting in savings.
One message it’s important to get across is that smart growth and improving the walking environment benefits vehicle drivers as well as walkers. Just as advocating for a healthy diet is not anti-food, advocating for walking friendly environments is not anti-car!
Naked Streets, Shared Space and Road Safety
Some interesting presentations looked at how removing rules and signs affects road safety. Rules take away responsibility from individual users, and it was argued by some that removing signs can increase safety for all road users. The design of a street has more effect on the speed of traffic and the safety of the street than signs. A panelist from the Royal National Institute for the Blind urged for safe space within shared space for visually impaired people who rely on clear signals to find their way around safely.
Assessment tools for walking facilities
Two different walkability assessment tools were discussed in this workshop. The Irvine Minesota Inventory involved over 160 measures to do with walkability. In the pilot described by the presenter, seven people were given four hours training, then sent out to rate an area using the tool. It took them half an hour per segment, and three days in total to cover the pilot area. Feedback was that the terminology was difficult and there were far too many questions, and some questions were very subjective. The Pedestrian Environment Review System PERS was said to be easy to apply, cost effective and to cover both quality and quantity from an end user perspective. From the information given, I felt that both systems used alone would be biased to a professional perspective, and not capture the user perspective adequately.
Wayfinding
Although this session was held on the last morning, after the conference dinner the night before, over twenty five people attended. My paper on Walking Map Development, describing the process for developing the Newtown Berhampore Walking Map, and the lessons learned from this, seemed to be well received.
Legible London is a project which aims to rationalize the present signing systems for pedestrians – over 30 in central London alone – into one easily understood and readily recognizable wayfinding system. The first pilot, around Bond Street tube station, will be in place by the end of this year, and it is hoped that a large part of the work will be completed before the 2012 Olympics in London.
The other presentation in this session was a Japanese impact study, which looked at changing visitor habits in a temple town by moving parking facilities to the end of town so that visitors had to walk through the town, thus bringing economic benefits to local businesses, and then walk around the temple complex using a walking map.
Manual for Streets
Mention was made of the Manual for Streets which was launched earlier this year in the UK by the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government, with support from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). The Manual gives guidance on effective street design, and replaces a previous publication “Places, Streets and Movement”.
Walking around Toronto before and during the conference
I found the traffic signals, which have a countdown system, were very user-friendly. Pedestrian waits were not too long. Traffic was allowed to turn on the white man, but drivers were very patient, and I experienced none of the revving of engines and whizzing through behind pedestrian’s heels as often happens in New Zealand cities.
The CN Tower – the tallest free standing tower in the world (until the tower in Dubai is completed) – gives a wonderful bird’s eye view of Toronto and surrounding areas and is great for orientating oneself.
The weekend before the conference started was full of walking friendly events, from the all night Nuit Blanche, where art performances, displays and events were staged in buildings, streets and parks throughout the city, with public transport running all night; a half marathon along the waterfront; a walk to support research into breast cancer; a large book fair in a park with the surrounding streets opened to pedestrians (aka roads closed to traffic); and the monthly Kensington Market where the area is opened to pedestrians and taken over by bands, stalls, and anarchic happenings including a car, painted white, being signed as a petition against further spending on the car culture.
Walk21 conference participants took part in the Canada-wide event aiming to break the existing world record for the largest number of people walking one kilometre simultaneously. Although the results of the attempt on the record are not yet known, one important outcome was the amount of publicity the event generated, promoting walking to school, creating walkable communities, and walking for health.
There is a twenty seven kilometre underground network of shops, services and entertainment giving access to buildings and subway stations in downtown Toronto. You can pop down and do your lunchtime shopping without even putting on your coat – great for winter, but the rest of the year would rather detract from one of walking’s great benefits – getting out in the fresh air. There are maps throughout the system, but quite easy to get lost in the underground labyrinth for a novice.
Overall impressions of the conference
I felt that some of the organization were not as good as in Melbourne, such as a lack of good spaces for networking, and some aspects of the catering (no tea/coffee provided for the pre-conference workshops meaning people had to go out instead of networking over tea breaks, cold tea and coffee on the first morning, and less than adequate provision for vegetarians).
The delegate list was not provided till the last day, and then the spreadsheet was out of kilter, making it hard to find the people you wanted to connect with.
Great to have four computers for internet access for delegates!
Having the conference dinner at the Royal Ontario Museum with access to the ground floor of the museum for a post dinner wander was an added bonus. On the downside, the enthusiastic band unfortunately drowned out conversation during the pre-dinner cocktail session!
The conference generated a lot of positive publicity and media coverage, which did a lot to raise the profile of walking issues before and during the conference