Nearly a third of City residents walk according to new survey
We’ve been focusing on cyclists in our recent analyses of the Make My Trip Count survey (MMTC), with a cycling survey overview, a closer dive into where people bike, and a look at how to keep up biking growth. We’re now going to take a look at what MMTC found for Pittsburgh’s pedestrians.
To recap the MMTC survey, one of its strengths is the way it allows respondents to describe their commute in all its complexity. Whereas other transportation surveys, like the American Community Survey (ACS) ask respondents to select their primary mode of transportation alone, MMTC allows respondents to select the three modes of transportation they use most frequently throughout the week.
This allows MMTC to capture the multimodal ways that Pittsburghers get around. With walking being an easy mode to combine with others, the share of multimodal pedestrians is important in understanding how people move around the city.
As noted previously, MMTC respondents hail not just from Pittsburgh or even Allegheny county, but a geographic range that reaches into Ohio and West Virginia. With some respondents commuting into Pittsburgh from as far as Cleveland and Erie, the percentage of pedestrians in the overall survey results is bound to be lower; walking from Erie would be a lengthy commute. Of the survey’s 20,000+ respondents, 12% indicated walking in their top three transportation choices.
According to MMTC, 28% of Pittsburgh residents include walking among their top three commute modes
Narrowing the focus to Allegheny County, about 14% of survey respondents included walking in their top three transportation choices. Pedestrian respondents from Pittsburgh and its neighboring boroughs, like Bellevue or Brentwood, amounted to almost 20%, and pedestrian respondents within Pittsburgh city limits totaled 28%!
Almost 10% of Pittsburgh respondents indicated walking as their primary mode of transportation (on par with the ACS data), with the greatest number of pedestrian trips originating in Downtown, South Side Flats, and Shadyside.
Like biking, walking is easy to combine with other methods of transportation, making the MMTC survey ideal in capturing the multimodality of movement throughout the city. Looking at the number of people incorporating walking into their commutes, it’s evident that walking is a vital part of multimodal transportation in Pittsburgh and the region.
With such a large percent of walkers, City initiatives like their steps planning and Complete Streets work are all the more important.
NEWSLETTER