Tag: walk audit

Making Walking Connections in Blandford

WalkBoston, along with more than 10 people committed to making Blandford more walkable, conducted a masked, in-person walk audit in Blandford’s Village Center on Friday, April 30. Residents are interested in improved walking connections between key destinations in the village center – including the library, the Country Store, and Town Hall – with Watson Park, the White Church, and the Town Common. Next steps include preparing a summary report which will be incorporated into the other planning activities in Blandford including the Blandford Resilient Master Plan and and Open Space and Recreation Plan.

The Hilltown CDC, together with Healthy Hampshire and WalkBoston, are leading a 5-year grant project to promote Age-Friendly Walkability in the Hilltowns Village Centers, funded by the Dept. of Public Health’s Healthy Aging Fund. In partnership with community residents and leaders, the team will be conducting a series of walk audits in partnering Hilltowns villages. The goal of these walk audits is to identify infrastructure improvements and policy changes to make village-center walking safe and enjoyable for people of all ages in the Hilltowns. The town of Blandford is one of the partnering communities in this grant project.

Streetsblog MASS: “A Walk Audit of Worcester”

Streetsblog MASS: “A Walk Audit in Worcester”

These photographs were all taken last December, for a virtual “walk audit” for the Indian Lake neighborhood that was hosted by WalkBoston, a statewide pedestrian advocacy organization, and WalkBike Worcester, a local advocacy group.
WalkBoston hosts walk audits all over the Commonwealth. Typically, they bring groups of people together to identify hazards and obstacles to foot traffic in a specific street of neighborhood. Since the pandemic began, WalkBoston has been conducting audits virtually, by sending advocates out to evaluate areas individually, collecting their findings via online forms, and discussing the results in group Zoom meetings.
“Even if what you’re seeing is depressing, the process is a tool to bring people together and build capacity and community assets to produce positive outcomes over the long run,” said LeighAnne Taylor, WalkBoston’s Program Manager and organizer of the Indian Lake event, in a phone conversation with Streetsblog after the walk audit. “Taking an inventory of all the issues is tedious, but it gives people an opportunity to make things happen when grants become available.”

Posted May 5, 2021

Downtown Brockton Virtual Walk Audit

On April 15 and April 29, 2021, WalkBoston and MassINC conducted a virtual walk assessment with community members in the downtown Brockton area as part of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Mass in Motion grant program, with support from the Solomon Foundation. The two main goals of the Gateway Cities walk audit project are to effect change at the local level to work towards safer, more enjoyable streets and to inform state policy and legislation to prioritize budgetary investment in Gateway Cities across the Commonwealth.

Read the full report here.

New Virtual Walk Audits: Worcester and Framingham

BY LEIGHANNE TAYLOR / WALKBOSTON PROGRAM MANAGER

Walk audits—one of WalkBoston’s most effective tools to change the built environment and build a constituency of walking advocates—face an obvious hurdle during the pandemic: we can’t meet in person. With more people walking than ever before, we could not hit pause and wait until it is safe to gather again. We adapted our walk audit process to be virtual to continue improving walking conditions. We have conducted four virtual walk audits since the pandemic began: in Salem, Springfield, Fitchburg, and Worcester—we wrapped up the latter two in January and discuss them below.

Fitchburg’s Intermodal Center Virtual Walk Audit is the second walk audit in a statewide project examining the connections between social infrastructure and walkability within transportation-oriented development (TOD) areas. Neighborhood data and resident perspectives will be captured in virtual conversations and self-led walk audits in five Gateway Cities in Massachusetts. This project is co-hosted by WalkBoston and MassINC, with support from the Solomon Foundation.

The Worcester Virtual Walk Audit was conducted by WalkBoston, WalkBike Worcester, and the Worcester Department of Public Health Mass in Motion Program. Residents requested the virtual audit, which is serving as a pilot program for Worcester’s upcoming Complete Streets Prioritization process.

How We Made Our Walk Audits Virtual

Session 1: Participants convene on Zoom for a Ped101 workshop to share their walking concerns, learn about walkability basics, and review the self-led walk audit process.
Self-led walk audit: Participants have two weeks to walk the specified route, and document photos and written observations about the walking environment.
Session 2: Post-walk, participants reconvene on Zoom to discuss and set plans for next steps.

We use Google Sites to share recordings of our Zoom meetings so those unable to attend the first session can watch and provide feedback on their neighborhood’s walkability. The recommendations made during the second session are summarized into a PowerPoint report and memo for participants to use and turn into actions.

Virtual walk audits have served as a valuable tool for conducting our community-partnered work in a socially- distanced world. While we look forward to resuming our in-person walk audits, we plan to leverage these digital engagement strategies in the future to hear from those unable to attend in-person. If you’re having success with virtual community engagement, we’d love to trade notes —get in touch!

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s January/February 2021 newsletter.
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Worcester Indian Lake Virtual Walk Audit

On December 1 and December 15, 2020, WalkBoston conducted a virtual walk audit for the Indian Lake Neighborhood of Worcester, MA. WalkBoston, WalkBike Worcester, and Worcester Mass in Motion co-hosted this walk audit process, which was requested by residents who are interested in activating the open spaces of their neighborhood and making it more walkable. The walk audit process was covered in a Streetsblog Mass article on May 7, 2021.

Read the full report here.