Feet First Philly and Temple University’s Office of Sustainability partnered for the third year to offer a Walk Audit Certification course to students. Students from six different disciplines came together to learn more about how the pedestrian environment can have positive or negative effects on traffic safety, social cohesion, and public health. Students were given an overview on Feet First Philly’s quantitative intersection walk audit tool and given five assignments to collect data on. Specifically they measured and evaluated crossing streets and intersections, sidewalks, driver behavior, safety, and comfort and appeal. 

West Mt Airy Neighbors(WMAN) was selected as the community walk audit partner after they reached out to Feet First Philly with concerns over a neighborhood corridor between Lincoln Drive and Germantown Avenue, which is used by speeding drivers as a cut through. The registered community organization expressed concern over wide roads, speeding drivers, blind crossings, and pointed to local daycares and senior facilities as vulnerable populations affected by these dangerous road conditions and selected five intersections they felt were the most dangerous. 

Students and WMAN residents came together to conduct walk audits at each of the five intersections. Residents offered local knowledge and context at each intersection giving background into past crashes and near misses and helped students collect data on pedestrian and car counts, crosswalk length, driver speed, and driver behavior. At the end of the audit the team compiled observations and gave scores to each assignment, or subtopic, and another to the overall intersection to create a final rating. Using the quantitative data they collected, students created a presentation on each intersection that included takeaways, lessons learned, and recommendations to make the intersection safer and more appealing. WMAN members will be able to use walk audit data and recommendations in their advocacy to make the streets and intersections safer in their community.

A big thank you to Temple’s Office of Sustainability and the Temple students who made these walk audits possible. You can find the students’ presentations and recordings of the presentations below.

To learn more about Feet First Philly’s quantitative intersection walk audit and qualitative corridor walk audit please visit feetfirstphilly.org or email feetfirstphilly@cleanair.org.