Pedestrian- and Transit-Friendly Design

Abstract

There has been a trend toward longer and longer blocks, and correspondingly fewer and fewer intersections within a given area. This practice is not pedestrian-friendly. For a high degree of walkability, block lengths of 300 ft, more or less, are desirable. Blocks of 400 to 500 ft still work well, but as blocks grow to 600 to 800 ft or longer, adjacent blocks become isolated from each other. The old transit industry standard - that transit users will walk a quarter mile, or 5 min at 3 mph, to a bus stop - is better than we might have guessed. Converting reported walk times from the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey into distances, and plotting and smoothing the resulting frequency curve, the median walking distance to and from transit stops is almost exactly a quarter mile.

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