Generating Sidewalk Network Using Roadway Network and Parcel Data

Good quality pedestrian infrastructure is vital to a safe, accessible, equitable, and sustainable transportation system. Planners recognize the benefits of providing high-quality pedestrian infrastructure, but often lack the asset management systems necessary to prioritize and track the implementation of sidewalk improvement projects. The pre-requisite of a sidewalk asset management system is a sidewalk network database. However, unlike the roadway network, a comprehensive sidewalk network database is not yet available for the transportation community to effectively manage sidewalk infrastructure. This paper introduces an affordable, automated and easy-to-implement process to generate GIS-based networks for sidewalks that are parallel to existing roadway networks and to generate associated links and nodes for crosswalks at the intersections. The automated methodology developed in this study employs parcel data and road network data, both of which are publicly available and free in most cases, with a series of GIS functions and spatial programming to generate a sidewalk network of links representing each side of the streets. Further, Perl spatial scripts are implemented to generate crosswalk links and nodes. The proposed method requires little computational resources, and tremendously reduces the manual labor required to develop a sidewalk and crosswalk network. An application to an Atlanta, Georgia neighborhood is presented, and the performance of the method is assessed.