Author: Ghada Abdul Aziz – Co-author: Heba Mousa – Reviewed by: Tu My Tran
Active mobility can be considered the unsung hero of sustainable transport. In this blog post, we walk you through four sections to shed light on walking and cycling for better cities: starting with a dialogue on transport data and drawing a baseline to understand walkability and cyclability, followed by a brief dive into approaches to measure walkability and lastly a look into the next steps.
The fifth chapter of the book Sustainable Transport: Planning for Walking and Cycling in Urban Environments (2003), titled “Does anyone walk anymore?, describes the different approaches to research transport modal share. The chapter shows how the motorized-centric lens has overshadowed the role of walking in transport. It explains how one of the most adopted methods of understanding modal share is to define the primary mode of the trip, which is usually the mode used for the most extended leg of the trip (longest distance, longest travel time), which undermines shorter linking trips. In this weighing, walking will always come last. This can be argued to have led to the gradual marginalization of walking in transport data.
The regional mobility surveys in the Mobility in Germany (MiD) Report in 2019 show a drop in the percentage of trips completed on foot only, from 24% in 2002 to 22% in 2017. When the authors of “Does anyone walk anymore?” examined the German mobility data in 2002, it was found that 70% of all trips completed by different modes included walking as part of the trip. The notable mobility researcher, Todd Lietman, suggests that instead of collecting data on the number of trips completed using only walking, the question should be how many trips include some walking.
However, this alteration in question in different contexts will not show a larger difference since the modal share of walking, for example, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is 39%. Despite this high percentage, these numbers need to be re-examined through the lens of equity and accessibility. According to a 2022 UNEP report, many vulnerable users depend on walking in African contexts out of necessity.
In other words, we need to draw a line between a city that walks and a walkable city.
Cycling can receive more attention than walking in travel surveys since it is not perceived as a negligible default mode of mobility in most cases. However, cycling needs to be also discussed beyond numbers, with more focus on cyclability.
The data-driven approach is a common place when looking at cycling activities in cities. Cycling heatmaps provided by cycling apps, such as Strava and Bike Citizens, have been widely used to gain insights on urban cycling. While this approach provides much-needed knowledge on the quantitative and spatial data, it needs to be complemented by other means of verification to ensure equal representation of bike users and their use cases. Some apps are more used for athletic and recreational cycling and, therefore, might misrepresent cycling as a mode of transport for daily activities like walking and cycling to work or school or cargo-bike delivery.
Qualitative assessments are also widely used by urban practitioners, many of which are collected using the Bicycle User Experience (BUX) tools. They provide a participatory, site-focused and culturally-sensitive insight on cycling. One constraint of such methods is that they are demanding in terms of time and human resources, especially when many neighbourhoods or diverse cycling contexts need to be covered.
A more policy-oriented approach is the self-assessment tools geared towards cities and local governments. CIVITAS’ international cycling community of practice offers a self-assessment tool for the community members to assess the planning, promotion and public participation in cycling.
To have a holistic overview of urban cycling, a mixed approach that covers multi-level aspects as well as the qualitative and quantitative sides of cycling is needed.
Measurement of walkability and cyclability is a question of scale and impact. ICLEI’s SPARK project has been designing assessment tools to support two cities in the Philippines -Quezon City and Pasig City- to understand how walking and cycling can be promoted and improved in a strategic, political and practical way.
The new “Walkability & cyclability assessment methodology” is a diagnostic tool to assess walkability and cyclability, reflecting the importance of binding different scales of assessment to create change.SPARK’s assessment builds on the Ecomobility Shift+ methodology that guides cities to self-assess and analyze their mobility performance; and adds to it two neighborhood and site-focused levels. The three levels of assessment tools that are defined in the SPARK project are as follows:
The first level is on a strategic and policy level; this level dives into the financial and political support endorsed by the senior decision-makers to push for creating walkable cities.
The second level tightens the scope onto neighbourhoods and acts as a contextual bridge between the first and last levels; in this level, the connectivity and continuity of the network on a neighbourhood level are assessed.
The third level is the site-level assessment of specific areas placed under the lens for future intervention and rescaling purposes.
It is essential to highlight that walkability assessments are not the ultimate goal in discussing improved active mobility in cities but rather an evidence-based pressure point to advocate for safer networks and better-informed decisions. In 2021 the World Bank Group published a discussion paper that focuses on investments in active mobility for different governance levels, from local to national. The report includes successful examples such as Bogota’s cycling culture that was maintained by political interest and commitment towards investing in the construction of bike lanes and involving bicycle advocates in governmental positions.
Active mobility is a public health issue, an accessibility issue and a safety issue, therefore a key getaway from this blogpost would be not to alienate walking from the discussion but to advocate for change through it. We invite you to discover the different ICLEI projects in African and Asian cities that are supporting cities towards walkability. Besides the SPARKk project in the Philippines, the Trans-Safe project is working with four pilot cities in Africa through different demonstration actions to improve road safety, especially for vulnerable road users.