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Circular walks now live on walkit.com
In response to user feedback, we've now launched circular walks – a unique feature of walkit.com.
So if you're looking to stretch your legs during your lunch hour, or maybe are planning a longer walking expedition for the weekend, you can now plan a circular walk from 15 minutes up to 4 hours.
We hope you'll find this feature particularly useful if you're more into walking for health or for leisure (rather than 'functional' A to B walking).
To generate a circular walk just click on the green 'Circular' tab, enter a start point (postcode, street name or point of interest), select your time and speed, and off you go.
Here are a few examples (see note below re timings):
2.5 hour walk from Waterloo Station, London (medium pace)
30 minute walk from Glasgow University (medium pace)
30 minute walk from the Custard Factory, Birmingham (medium pace)
1.5 hour walk from Piccadilly Station, Manchester (medium pace)
Why not have a play generating some routes from your home or place of work, and let us know what you think, or add a comment below.
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Please note the following from our FAQ:- Like our 'less busy' routes, we try and favour quieter streets and 'off-road' paths, but please note that we can't guarantee to find you a 'nice' walk.
- Our timings may be out by a few minutes – it's not always possible to get it spot on. We also prioritise 'less busy' routes, where we can find them, over hitting precise target times.
- Longer routes may take you out of the town/city limits, in which case the walk may be along roads (where we can't guarantee there are pavements) as we haven't yet captured footpath data in the urban/rural fringes of many of our towns/cities.
- We don't have the facility to 'drag' the route in a different direction.
Eye pod cast away?
Or eye pod download…
(apologies…!)
DfT's Sustainable Travel City project cancelled
The DfT has confirmed to us that they've cancelled their £29 million Sustainable Travel City (STC) demonstration project.
Things had gone ominously quiet for a project that was first announced back on May 13 – and surprise, surprise, 10 months later it's bitten the dust.
This will no doubt cause just a tad of frustration in local/regional transport bodies, who put in a lot of effort, at very short notice, to get their bids in last year.
Sadiq Khan has now announced that there will be an Urban Challenge Fund (UCF) instead, from which cities will only be eligible to receive money if they can show their plans will:- improve journey choice
- tackle congestion
- improve safety
- lower carbon emissions
- and promote healthier lifestyles through better air quality and more walking and cycling.
No figures and no timescale have been released for the UCF.
So just after the publication of an active travel strategy that claimed to “put walking and cycling at the heart of our transport and health strategies”, a demonstration project that genuinely had some financial welly to try and make that happen (in at least one city) has been dropped.
To give the government the benefit of the doubt, you could argue that applying sustainability criteria to a larger fund and a larger number of cities will have more impact than focusing resource on just one demonstration city.
But our guess is that proponents of sustainable travel in both local government and in the NGOs will be treating this announcement with a mixture of despair, caution … or maybe just world-weary indifference.
(And this on a day when the Committee of Public Accounts published a report saying that “the taxpayer has lost up to £410 million as a result of the Department for Transport’s inadequate management of the risks arising from the Metronet contracts for upgrading the infrastructure of the London Underground.”)
'Upcycle' your old shoes
We were contacted the other day by Dominique Mitchell, a Masters Student at Plymouth College of Art.
Dominique and her fellow students were conducting a carbon reduction survey, and at the same time trying to raise awareness of the benefits of walking instead of taking the car.
They had the idea of 'improving' (or 'upcycling') people's old shoes to get them out of dark wardrobes and on their feet again.
Apparently people loved the idea of getting their boring old shoes revamped, and it's all been a huge success.
She got people to drop their old shoes round to her (though she admits some people bought cheap new shoes…) and she painted a design on for them.
The project was so popular that she's still taking orders (and each pair gets a walkit.com postcard sent out with them).
Here are some of the results:
New Active Travel Strategy (?) for England
The Department for Transport and Department of Health (why is one 'for' and the other 'of'?!) in England have just published a new Active Travel Strategy, which claims to put “walking and cycling at the heart of our transport and health strategies”.
It has the laudable aim of getting more people cycling and walking more often and more safely.
One chart from the report shows why that may be necessary:
- Wherever possible creating an environment in which walking is safe, convenient and enjoyable
- Encouraging people of all ages to find their feet through programmes like Walking for Health, 2012 Active Challenge Routes, Walk Once a Week (WoW) and web-based walking route finders
It's a real curate's egg of a document. It mentions a bewildering number of initiatives and case studies, but you get the feeling that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. You don't get a sense that central government is showing much passion and inspiring leadership on this issue.
Which I suppose poses the question, is that their role? There are some less than subtle hints in the document that regional and local government need to 'get on with it'. E.g:
[p. 24] “Ultimately, however, one of the major barriers to more walking and cycling is that their potential and benefits are not always fully appreciated by decision-makers involved in local and community planning projects.”
[p.42] “The DfT already provides over £1.3bn capital funding per year for small-scale transport improvement and maintenance programmes…but historically local authorities have chosen to spend relatively little supporting active travel.”
Is that fair comment?
The elephant in the room is that car (and rail, for that matter) projects still get eye-watering amounts of funding compared to walking and cycling. It wouldn't take much of a shift in budgetary allocations to fund a national roll-out of the (excellent) Sustainable Travel Towns demonstration projects – particularly when the document states that these programmes offer very high value for money, with an implied benefit-cost ratio (after including environmental, consumer benefit and health impacts) of 20: 1 or higher.
And just in case we needed any more persuasion that there might be a strong business case for 'getting on with it' (whether that's local, regional or national government, or businesses, NGOs etc.) then another chart in the report spells it out:
So the need is urgent, but ultimately it's unclear whether this strategy (which has no targets) is going to deliver the step-change necessary. There's plenty of good intent, and good practice, but it really doesn't read like a document that truly puts “walking and cycling at the heart of our transport and health strategies”.
Stay healthy, save time, use the (bleedin') stairs
And you could add 'save carbon' to that list too.
It's a simple message, and Adrian Davies' enlightening (and burgeoning) series of 'essential evidence' papers over on Bristol City Council's website shows that it's a message that can work too.
While walkit.com isn't about indoor walking, we're always keen to learn from others what messages can be used to trigger changes in behaviour – effort, cost, eco-virtue, health, 'pleasantness', time etc.
Adrian points to evidence that a simple poster at the bottom of an escalator can have a measurable impact on the number of people who opt for the stairs instead, even doubling it. And of course taking the stairs is something you can fit into your everyday routine.
One study showed that men and boys were more likely to use the stairs than women and girls (what lies behind that – shoes, clothing, women more likely to be with children/carrying shopping, some kind of machismo thing….??).
Of course humour and music might also work as triggers to change behaviour, which just gives me an excuse to once again link to two of my favourite vids:
Next generation Hollywood stars in walkit.com video
We were delighted to be contacted by Akhil Kanukuntla recently – he's a 15 years old Creative and Media Diploma student from East London.
He's been part of a project to raise awareness of global warming and inform everyone how we can help to reduce CO2 emissions.
He and his class mates came across walkit.com and decided to make a promotional video for us. In his own words:“I think it is an excellent way to promote walking and the website itself is very simple yet cleaver, you guys are doing a great job in making our world a better place and i believe that walking instead of driving makes a massive difference but most people don't see how, so a couple of my friends and i have produced an advert promoting walkit.com as part of our project. Although we only had two days to make it, we tried our best to get the message across through our advert.”
The acting, the music, the editing, the suspense – there's a load of talent in East London! When these guys are famous, remember you saw them here first.
And here it is:
And there's a second version here:
Why is walkit.com looking a little different?
We've been busy working behind the scenes on a new release of the site, and we hope you like the results.
It's not transformatory stuff in terms of appearance, but there's been a lot of tinkering around in the 'back end'. Managing and editing content on the site is now controlled by a much more user-friendly Content Management System, therefore giving us the flexibility to change content on an ongoing basis.
One of the more visible changes concerns the 'stat dock' – our slightly nerdy term for the panel of journey-related statistics associated with each map. Not everyone was a fan of the semi-transparent version, so we hope you find it clearer now.
- Facebook button – Planning a meet-up with friends? Help them get there by posting a walkit.com route map to your Facebook news feed.
- Walk here often? - No, not a dating service for walkers (but maybe we should be working on that…), but a reminder that you can 'Set as your home city' any given walkit.com area. This will become your default town/city when you visit the site, and means you don't have to select it from the drop-down menu every time you generate a route.
- Link – We've added in a 'tinyurl' to make it easier to cut and past a route map URL into an email.
- No tubes outside London! – this (understandably) annoyed non-Londoners; so we've now replaced it with a train CO2 factor, or specific light rail/metro/subway, as appropriate. We've used the most up-to-date CO2 conversion factors from Defra.
Finally you'll notice the books 'widget' changing more regularly. Get in touch if there are any books that you think would be particularly fitting for our walking-cum-urban-cum-green-cum-healthy-cum-curious sort of ethos.
And more will be revealed over the coming weeks…
Come and work for us - 2 new jobs at walkit.com
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
Deadline: Friday 12 February
A new year and 2 new job opportunities at walkit.com. Come and help us capitalise on opportunities to build a stronger, more popular and richer service, and get Britain walking more!
We're looking for a web developer and a data manager.
1. Web developer
You'll need to be a good problem solver, with a solid coding background. You should have a pragmatic approach to software development, with an eye for clean, usable, standards-compliant, cross-browser web design.
More specifically you will need to be:- expert in PHP and MYSQL
- able to transform any graphic design into valid and clean XHTML and CSS
- well versed in WordPress development, including plugin and theme development
- able to code javascript to a good standard (at least 2 years experience), with a good familiarity of jQuery
- very familiar with and confident working in the Unix shell, and have experience working with command line tools
- familiar with the use of source control systems, such as SVN
2. Data manager
You'll need to have a solid database and systems background. You must have experience of working in a systems critical environment, with an eye for detail and a “safety first” attitude to system management.
You will need to be:- experienced with MYSQL administration and query writing, including creation and use of stored procedures
- experienced with UNIX/LINUX shell scripting (preferably bash shell)
- very familiar with and confident working in a Unix environment, and have experience working with command line tools
- familiar with data backup and disaster recovery procedures
The jobs will be based at walkit.com's Birmingham office, though we will consider the possibility of working remotely (in which case you should be able to come to our Birmingham office at least once a week).
Terms
Full time, although part-time will be considered for more experienced candidates.
Salary
To be discussed with candidates based on their experience.
Deadline
Friday 12 February
Get in touch
Think you might be the person for the job? Or know someone else who might be? Then please drop us a line on jobs@walkit.com with:- your CV
- why you'd like to work for walkit.com
- how your skills could be used to develop the service
- where possible, links to examples of your work that you think are relevant to the role
Mind the hill - view our new incline data below each London route
We've just launched a new hill profile graph which you can find beneath all of our London route maps. This follows their introduction in other walkit.com cities such as Sheffield and Glasgow.
In these areas you can see how steep different parts of your journey will be – particularly useful info if you're carrying a load, pushing a pram or using a wheelchair. Or maybe you've got medical or age-related reasons for wanting to avoid hills. We think bikers should also find this info handy.
Here are some examples:
The graph's y axis measures 0 to 250m above sea level, and the x axis 0 to 6,000m of walk length. For route lengths of under 6km the graph line will stop short of the end of the right-hand edge of the chart area (i.e. we don't stretch to fit) – we think this allows you to make more meaningful comparisons between the hilliness of each route (see first two images above) .
However for practical reasons, for routes over 6km, we compress the whole distance into the chart area – so you might end up with a slightly Matterhorn-esque graph line (see third image).
Please note that we take account of the impact inclines have on walking speed when generating a route – so your journey times and Calories burns will change accordingly. We'll also try and find you a route round a hill, rather than over it, if we think it'll make your journey quicker.
Please let us know what you think, and/or comment below.
