Pedestrian path movement can be analyzed using video reworked with computer animation software.

More often than not, cars follow the paths prescribed by traffic engineers but pedestrians are a different story.  Many pedestrians venture outside the lines, whether to save time, energy, or take a route for which a path is not provided.  In some cases, these improvised pedestrian routes can be identified by the dirt path that develops through repeated use – this usually a clear sign that there is a problem with the form and paths provided.  But in most cases, we fail to sufficiently understand pedestrian behavior and design in ways that exhibit this lack of understanding.

That said, there are a number of ways in which this gap in the analysis can be filled.  I previously mentioned the possibilities of new gps-enabled handheld phones, which would be suitable for a downtown scale route and origin-destination analysis.  Also, Jan Gehl has a done a lot of work studying pedestrian behavior and developed a process that utilizes teams manually recording a number of important behavior factors.  And here (above image) is one method of tracking pedestrian movement – from pedestrianlevitation.net – that uses video reworked with computer animation software.

It is hard to study pedestrian behavior in cities without an ample supply of pedestrians.  But it is a historic lack of understanding and adequate attention that has created this dilemma.  The more attention we give to an analysis of pedestrians and the way they interact with the city, the more appropriate our design solutions will be, resulting in an increase in pedestrian users over time.

Right now there is very little (i.e. zero) analysis of this type taking place in Oklahoma City.  This is unfortunate but expected from a city that long ago decided to focus only on mobility as it relates to automobiles.  Hopefully, public works will begin to treat pedestrian issues like they matter, developing a process for analyzing circulation at least within active areas where pedestrian-friendliness is a stated priority (e.g. Downtown and Bricktown).  It might even be interesting to do “traffic counts” in the Underground to see how many pedestrians we are keeping off the streets.

But until that happens we can do some rudimentary analysis by identifying where pedestrian circulation problems are shown to exists – dirt paths.  So does anyone know of any dirt paths in Downtown or Bricktown?  I can think of a few, but am hoping you all can chime in with some examples I don’t know.