If you’re familiar with the Washington, DC neighborhood Georgetown, then you know that M Street – a beautiful, brick-paved avenue – is the worst for walking.
The worst for walking quickly, that is. The sidewalks are too narrow to accommodate the large numbers of people window shopping and hustling to catch buses along the busy thoroughfare.
On narrow sidewalks like M Street’s, one slow walker or a group of friends have the power to reduce overall pedestrian speed, a new study from the University of Sydney found.
The researchers observed people walking on a wide sidewalk and a narrow sidewalk. They found that people using smartphones or walking with others walked more slowly than those walking alone not using phones.
However, on the wide sidewalk, the slow walkers didn’t affect the overall speed of the walkers behind them – these people temporarily increased their speed to pass the slow walkers and then resumed their regular gait.
This was impossible on the narrow sidewalk: since there was no room for passing, the faster walkers had to reduce their speed to stay behind the slow walkers.
So the solution to us seems obvious: we should make our sidewalks wider.
Instead of us locals getting mad at tourists in Georgetown for taking pictures and walking with friends – activities the researchers found to slow down walking speeds – we should increase sidewalk space.
But what about induced demand… for walking?
If more people want to walk on a sidewalk that’s pleasant to walk on, that’s probably not a bad thing. People walking tend to spend more money at local businesses than people driving. Georgetown knows this: on select weekends on-street parking is eliminated to make the sidewalks wider.
Photo by Brent Rostad on Flickr’s Creative Commons.