Walkability

Rick Chellman , principal with TND Engineering, posted this to a thread for Knight Fellows and I thought it was worth sharing...

Walkability as a new feature in an otherwise suburban area is one thing and details are VERY important; in a more established pedestrian environment, the streetscape can "get away" with more problems.
As many of you know, I have tried to place myself at the forefront of creating walkable streets and places for years; I have traveled widely and paid close attention to what "works" and what doesn't.

I have long enjoyed and at times have studied Portsmouth, NH as a very walkable place that generate a lot less vehicular traffic than it would were it "assembled" in a suburban fashion (I proved this with a cordon traffic count in the 1990's).

We moved to Portsmouth about a year and a half ago and, having a dog as well as liking to walk, I walk 5-8 miles/day around town from my home. These walks give me the opportunity to study details, and many are "wrong" based on what i know to be professionally better (problematic existing one-way streets, narrow sidewalks, etc).

But Portsmouth was settled in 1623 and still has the oldest continuously operating Naval shipyard. It also has a high concentration of very good restaurants and is rated as one of the top shopping locations in New England- its "sustainability" is pretty well established at this point in time.

Portsmouth also has many narrow streets- State highways 20' wide; two-way residential streets of 14-20' wide, with on-street parking etc.

It is not uncommon in my travels to many friendly locations to find strangers acknowledging and even speaking to each other when passing on the sidewalk; in Portsmouth, it is not at all unusual for this to occur across the street as strangers pass.

So, "walkability" can be a carefully crafted newly created place or a less carefully crafted older environment where pedestrians overpower the design problems.

Bottom line: If we make/enhance walkable environments, then we have preserved the best set of options for future transportation systems- be they buses, trains or Star Trek transporters, if we can walk to them their viability is automatically enhanced by orders of magnitude.

  

Steven A. Ludsin, January 10, 2010

I found your organization in the article in the January 10, 2010 Sunday New York Times Business Section. The article was above my letter to the editor I had published about real estate foreclosures. I am working on a development in historic downtown Riverhead, New York and yoru approach makes enormous sense to attract commerce amd increase desirability. Best regards, Steven A. Ludsin East Hampton, New York 631 324 0550

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