CAMPUS WALKABILITY: From Jackson Street Building to Busbee Hall
Group Members: Tyler Barron, Erin Liberatore, Lesa Miller
Investigation Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 and Thursday, September 15, 2016
The walk from Jackson Street Building on North Campus to Busbee Hall on East Campus is unique in that it has an unbroken line of sidewalks, crosswalks, and bridges to facilitate travel between the two points. The walk is approximately 1.5 miles long and has been broken up into nine segments to better explain the walkability of the route as a whole. Those nine segments are marked off by notable points labelled with a letter and a descriptive name of the stop. The walkability score was determined by analysing the presence and absence of features such as sidewalks, crosswalks, street lights, parks, and more. The highest score possible from this method is 25, and the highest ranking segment of our route was from A-B, or the very beginning of our walk.
Location Map:
Walkability Scores and Interactive Map
To make more sense of the map above, take a look at our Interactive Walkability Map. With it, you can explore each segment- see pictures of what the route looks like- and see how things match up to the table on the left.
In general, the walkability scores were not terrible for our route. However, these scores do not take into account the human element- they only consider the pure functionality of a space. Because of this, we do not believe that these scores accurately reflect the walkability of the space, as there are other factors than functionality that influence walkability.
Analysis
Jackson Street Building to Busbee Hall is a mostly downhill walk, doing the walk the other way is uncomfortable, and with a backpack, all but impossible. There are large segments of this walk that I would not do by myself at night as there is no lighting and no escape route possible. An interesting thing I noticed on my walk is that there were often ADA ramps when crossing a section of sidewalk, but they went nowhere, this was particularly evident along the back of Sanford Stadium, and these were not along designated drop off points. Large portions of the sidewalk all along my route was in a state of disrepair, the top layers weathered down to the aggregate mix. Jackson Street to Psychology building has nice wide sidewalks, but this is a bit misleading as the curb is maybe 3 inches and trucks and buses use portions of the sidewalk to park on for deliveries or to make the turn from Baldwin onto Jackson Street. Whenever it rains, the sidewalks become a slick mess. There is no bike lane on Jackson Street, and pedestrians are very much not the main focus on this road.
Other observations are how much of this walk is impervious with little to no shade from plants or trees. Morning and evening shade tend to come from buildings, and at one point the geographic features on the southbound side of East Campus Road rise up and create a massive earthen retaining wall held in place with ground cover and brick walls. The other side of the street has no bike lane, no sidewalk, only a railroad track that students use as a makeshift walkway from East Campus Village up to North Campus. East Campus Road is a busy street, it’s noisy and despite posted speed limits, traffic can move pretty fast at times. The walk is not desirable, enjoyable, or always safe. Unless you are a fully able bodied adult, the 1.5 mile trek is not very feasible, and is really only done out of necessity, not for pleasure.