Measuring Neighbourhood Walking Access for Older Adults

Older adults are an important part of the world’s population. Many researchers have worked on walking as a mode of transport and measuring walking access. However, considering older adults (aged 65 and over) walk time, older population, and older pedestrians’ safety to measure walking accessibility has not been widely discussed. This study proposes two Walking Accessibility Index (OWAI1 and OWAI2) to measure walking access levels for older adults around the neighbourhoods. The index considers the older travelers’ walk time to reach various destinations (e.g., shopping, healthcare, education, and recreation services), land use mix, pedestrian crash datasets, street connectivity and the older population. Among these two proposed indices, OWAI1 statistically performs better. The transport and urban planners can use the newly developed OWAI1 for future planning and policy implementations. The index may be applied to measure disabled commuters’ walking access levels as considerable walking speed is lower. Besides, the proposed index is also appropriate for other adults by using the corresponding variables for that particular age group. Metropolitan Melbourne is used in this paper as the case study to measure older adults’ walking accessibility. This paper outlines that the older adults’ walking access level is very low for most Melbourne areas, negatively impacting their travel behavior.