Monday, July 14, 2008

Pedestrian Plan Survey Results

Results from the first in a series of surveys designed to gather information on pedestrian habits in our area are now available.

SRTC, the City of Spokane, the Spokane Regional Health District, and the Regional Pedestrian Plan Committee are in the process of developing a Regional Pedestrian Plan for the area of Spokane County.

To develop a plan that addresses the needs and issues of pedestrians and promotes an increase in physical activity for residents of our area, a series of public surveys is being used to gather feedback on a variety of issues, such as why people walk, where they walk to, and what prevents them from walking. The information collected will be used to identify areas/issues that should be focused on to make it easier to walk in our community.

The first Pedestrian Plan survey was distributed electronically in June 2008. Approximately 1090 area citizens responded.
Here's a link to the results. Take a look, then let us know if any of these results surprise you.

3 comments:

Charles said...

I have bycycled or walked to work for the last 28 years, and walk quite a bit for some volunteer work I do. While I walk all year, I see very few in the winter and so the snow-ice problem on the sidewalks does not surprise me at all. I live on an arterial with a bike lane on both outside lanes, and the city promised us they would use the bike lanes in the winter to plow the snow and not bury the sidewalks, but they seem to delight in seeing how much snow they put on the sidewalks especially the ones just shoveled.

Charles

SRTC Staff said...

Charles, At every single meeting I go to involving the public and pedestrian issues, the issue of snow on the sidewalks comes up. And yet, I know some of the plow crews and they all swear they're doing the best they can, so it's hard to know what to believe. I can understand winters like last winter when there just wasn't anywhere to put the snow after a while. Too bad plow drivers and citizens couldn't somehow trade places for a day to experience the challenges the other faces :)

Charles said...

I know they can do better, I was standing on my walk one evening when the plows came by, they left a nice berm just outside of the curb, and NONE ended up on my walk. Remember there is a 3.5 foot bike lane in front of my house and not once during this last winter did they ever plow any snow into the bike lane in front of my house, all went onto the sidewalk. Across the street where they did not shovel their walk, they stayed out 3-4 feet from the curb. Now this is how they have been plowing for the last ten years or so, plowing in the sidewalks that are cleared and rewarding those that do not shovel their sidewalks by staying away from the curb and their sidewalks.
I was in Pullman in 1968-69 and they came out with small bulldozers to plow the berms across the sidewalks and onto the lawns at the college to have more room to plow snow from the streets

Charles


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.