Development and implementation of an audit tool for the pedestrian built environment

This study presents the development and implementation of an audit tool for the pedestrian built environment in the framework of walkability and sustainable mobility. The audit tool was implemented across eight main, collector and local streets in the city of Volos, Greece. The audit tool consists of two checklists: one for the road segments and one for the crosswalks. Four suitably trained auditors formed the auditors' team. In the first step of the study the auditors charted the pedestrian infrastructure, took photos of the built environment and created a drawing where they noticed the photos with their identification codes. In the second step, they implemented separately the audit tool for each road segment and crosswalk for both sides of the streets during normal traffic flow and under good weather conditions. In the third step, the auditors formed a join checklist, wrote the audit report and noticed on the drawing the pedestrian mobility problems according to the join checklist codes. The final step of the study was the proposition of remedial actions in order to improve the pedestrian mobility and walkability across the examined streets. This audit tool can help engineers and decision makers not only audit the pedestrian built environment but also design and construct one. Especially in municipalities with low budget available in sustainable mobility projects, this low cost audit tool can upgrade the walkability level of their city. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of he, Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012