walkit.com

From the blog

Living Streets' 80th birthday survey

The excellent Living Streets want your views on what would transform a street you use everyday into a safe, attractive and enjoyable place for everyone.

It's a dead short survey and will help guide their future strategy.

80 huh?  walkit.com is a mere toddler.

Essential evidence: the benefits of walking and cycling

Dr Adrian Davis, 'Public Health support to City Development' at Bristol City Council is putting together an interesting set of punchy one-siders that provide peer-reviewed evidence for the benefits of cycling and walking.

He adds to them on a weekly basis on the Bristol City Council website.

Here are the topics so far:

1. Safety in numbers
2. Segmentation in behaviour change
3. Evidence hierarchy
4. Cycling and all cause mortality
5. Impact of highway traffic capacity reductions
6. Walking to health
7. Weight gain and car use
8. Physical activity – the best buy in public health
9. Bus use and deregulation
10. Cycle commuting
11. Walkable communities
12. Life change events and physical activity participation
13. Cycling reduces absenteeism at the workplace
14. A healthy school journey
15. Vision Zero
16. Objective monitoring, children's travel and physical fitness
17. Using pedometers to increase physical activity and improve health
18. The role of habit in travel behaviour
19. Unintended health impacts of road transport policies and interventions
20. Health Impact Assessment (HIA)
21. Obtaining a driving licence and interventions to influence the decision
22. Inverse Care Law
23. Mass Community Cycling Events
24. Economic Benefits of Cycling
25. Cycling Safety – Lessons from The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany
26. Effect of crime and neighbourhood on physical activity
27. Air Pollution
28. Public Transport and Physical Activity

So if you're ever in an argument with someone who's doubtful about the benefits of getting people walking more (and even, heaven forbid, putting the odd restriction on car use), these may provide a few facts and stats to bolster your case.

The new 'UK Low Carbon Transition Plan': what role for walking?

The Government today published its Low Carbon Transition Plan.

It plots out how the UK will meet a cut in emissions of 34% on 1990 levels by 2020.

It says that by 2020:

• More than 1.2 million people will be in green jobs
• More than 1.5 million households will be supported to produce their own clean energy
• 40% of electricity will be from low carbon sources, from renewables, nuclear and clean coal
• The UK will be importing half the amount of gas that we otherwise would
• The average new car will emit 40% less carbon than now.

It's easy to be cynical about this stuff, but it really does look as though the UK is taking a bit of a world lead (in legislative terms at least) on climate change.  And even if the detail is in the delivery, you've still got to have a plan to deliver that detail.

In the transport section walking gets a mention in the context of the new 'Sustainable Travel City', where up to £29 million will be available over 3 years for a major urban area to invest in initiatives to cut car travel and increase walking, cycling and public transport use.

While £29 million is certainly a chunky amount of money, one area getting a lot of money for 3 years doesn't amount to much of a plan.

But let's not be churlish – if deemed a success (like the Sustainable Travel Demonstration Towns), maybe it will provide a model for all the UK's large urban areas.  Then, the combined health, air quality, noise, community and carbon benefits of getting more people out and about more on foot (and bike) would really start to kick in.

walkit.com debate: Top Gear - the Marmite of TV programming?

Do you watch Top Gear?

We hope some of you do.  If there wasn't a bit in the middle of a Venn diagram where walkit.com users intersect with Top Gear viewers I think we'd have a problem on our hands.

Obviously to some, BBC2's very own Boggis, Bunce and Bean are the devil(s) incarnate, while to others they're TV gold.  I oscillate precariously between those two poles, keeping closer to the former, but making dangerous recces towards the latter.

Can you watch this without laughing?

But there we go, fallen straight into the trap!  Giving Top Gear the oxygen of publicity – certainly the last thing it needs, and to some, the last thing it deserves.

But is Top Gear little more than harmless fun, recounting the jolly japes of middle-aged pranksters with louche [just checked: defn = shady, sinister, shifty or disreputable] hair as they humorously, and sometimes ironically, help us understand modern-day car culture? Or is it more ominous, maintaining or boosting the predominance of that car culture in quite an insidious way and therefore hampering the efforts of those (including politicians) who want to 'recalibrate' our relationship with the car, especially in city centres?

Discuss.

Maybe the most unnerving thing about Top Gear is its hybrid format. If you look at the BBC listings you won't find it under Sport/Motorsport, or Entertainment/Variety Shows, or Comedy/Satire, or Drama/Fantasy.   No, it is listed as Factual/Cars & Motors. Got that? Top Gear is fact.

So the recent episode where the boys pretend to be 17-year-olds, and go around a track trying to crash into as many bicycles, shopping trolleys and bus shelters as possible is … fact. And going to the desert to race two cars that 99.999% of us couldn't possibly ever afford to own, at speeds that would be illegal on 99.999% of the UK's tarmac is … fact. Not entertainment. Or comedy. It's factual.

So what's this got to do with walkit.com and its users? Not a lot maybe. While we may be able to whip up quite a debate about wheelie shopping trolleys, perhaps you're all intensely relaxed about Top Gear?

What's the best policy:

Ignore it? (we've failed on that score)
Denigrate it?
Ridicule it?
Enjoy it?

Annual user survey results: 32% now 'always' or 'often' walking rather than taking the car

We thought you might be interested in a summary of the results of the survey we ran on the site in May.

Here are some headlines:

• Nearly 80% of respondents say that walkit.com has encouraged them (at least once) to switch to walking from another mode of transport
• As a result of using walkit.com, the following % of respondents say they are either 'always' or 'often' now walking instead of taking a:
  • Car – 32%
  • Taxi – 40%
  • Tube/metro/subway – 60%
  • Bus – 56%
  • Train – 23%
• Nearly 60% claim to be taking at least an extra hour of exercise per week as a result of using walkit.com
• Respondents use walkit.com most for working out trips to meetings/events
• We have more female than male users
• 80% of respondents were aged 26 – 55

More detail below. Please note the following:

• 422 people completed the survey
• They are self-selecting respondents (not a random sample)
• We understand that more women fill in online forms than men
• There is a heavy bias towards London

Do leave a comment or get in touch if you want to discuss further.