The Use of a Sidewalk Quality Assessment Survey in Developing Sidewalk Ratings

The recent push to increase non-motorized transportation in the last decade has led to an increased need for research and data relating to walking and walkability. The sidewalk assessment project that is currently underway at The Georgia Institute of Technology aims to improve walkability in communities by increasing information and methods of evaluation for pedestrian infrastructure. In conjunction with data collected on the sidewalks of Atlanta, researchers deployed a survey containing sample sidewalk segments to pedestrian transportation professionals. The survey asked respondents to rate four randomly selected sidewalk segments from a database of 40 possible segments and solicited individual ratings, what factors played into the rating, and a comparative rating with the other three sidewalks selected. A classification tree analysis identifies important variables in the expert rankings as the presence of cracks and lack of maintenance in sidewalks, gaps and level changes in sidewalks, and the presence of buffers and pedestrian amenities. A possible unforeseen survey bias is suggested by these results as all variables that showed to play a larger role in rating decision making were elements that experts gauged visually from video and image data, while variables given as numerical measurement information (such a width, grade, and cross-slope), did not appear as important.