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Living Streets campaign
Our good friends at Living Streets are pushing the new coalition government to commit to transport and planning policies that will transform the built environment into a safer, more pedestrian-friendly one for all users to enjoy.
Safer streets mean that more parents would allow their children to walk to and from school, thus improving their health through exercise. Safer streets mean having lower speed limits, which would increase the number of people using local public spaces and choosing to walk or cycle rather than taking their car, and also reduce the number of casualties in road accidents.
During the run-up to the election all the major parties launched their ‘green manifestos’. However this doesn’t ensure that the current government will make the changes necessary to improve the balance between the rights of pedestrians and the priority given to vehicles on our streets. Andrew Gray is one of the many political party members who pledged their support: “Decisions on street design are still being made by highway departments with the interests of road traffic uppermost, and with trees, furniture, pedestrians etc 'slotted in' later, often with difficulty.”
Living Streets want to ensure that the Government realises the importance of safe and attractive streets for pedestrians, and have therefore launched a ‘100 days of new government’ campaign, in order to drive support for this important and challenging task.
If you want reduced carbon emissions and congestion, improved health and quality of life for your children, more local community interaction, and support for sustainable local economies, then sign the Living Streets ‘100 days of new government’ pledge to take your views to the decision makers at No. 10. Read more here, and make your pledge here.
Sue Ryder Care Midnight Walks
We're glad to see that quite a few of you are taking advantage of our new walking events listing page, and popping your events up there for all to see. In particular, we're very happy to see the number of charity fundraising walks and runs that feature. They are a great way to get outdoors, get some exercise, make some new friends and raise money for a worthy cause all at the same time.
Currently, we only really promote events that are occurring in one of our host cities, so that events showing up on the city home-pages are relevant. However, we're aware that a lot of charities often run programmes of events up and down the country, including many in towns and cities that we don't yet cover.
If this is you, then we're more than happy to shout out about your worthy cause here on the blog, and list your whole series of events. And of course, you can still add individual events in our host cities as well. Please get in touch if you want us to blog about you.
This week, we want to give a mention to Sue Ryder Care, who provide compassionate care and social support to people with challenging end of life and long-term conditions. They provide care 24 hours every day in 14 care centres and in people's homes, and each year need to raise £74 million to fund their work.
Sue Ryder Care run a series of women only Midnight Walks over the summer every year, in order to raise money. There are still five left to go this summer:
Dundee – 28.8.10
Aberdeen – 4.9.10
Ilkley – 11.9.10
Manchester – 25.9.10
Leeds – 25.9.10
If one of them is happening near you, why not get involved.
For more details visit http://fundraising.suerydercare.org/midnightwalk/
mywalkit+ review
Even though I wasn’t feeling particularly energetic this morning, I found myself powering through and completing the 3.5 mile walk to work, rather than hopping on the bus half way. This was because I knew I’d be satisfied once I arrived at work, and could enter the whole journey into my mywalkit+ account, and watch the bar on my graph shoot up. Although I walk a lot anyway, I’ve found mywalkit+ to be a good motivation for me – the days where I’ve been a bit lazy stand out a mile when I view the graph of my week. A visual representation of what you’ve achieved each day is often more powerful that simply knowing the figures.
Plus, I still know how long my journey is going to take on those days where I’m still a little sleepy in the mornings and trundling along (rather than power walking) because I’ve entered my own personalised walking speeds into my account. I’ve got my normal walking pace saved, plus ‘strolling’ and ‘in a rush’, giving me a better estimate of my journey time.
Depending on what floats your boat and keeps you going, mywalkit+ can also tell you the carbon saving you’ve made over the week by avoiding your car or public transport, or tell you how many calories you’ve burned off. If losing weight is your main motivation for getting walking, you can also log your weight and subsequent weight losses week by week as you go along.
So if you have good intentions on a Monday morning, that tend to have faded somewhat by the end of the week, then maybe signing up to mywalkit+ can keep you motivated. And if you get your friends to sign up too, then maybe a bit of friendly competition will aid your motivation! You can shout about your achievements by posting your mileage to facebook and twitter.
So let us know if you’re signed up, and whether you have any feedback for us. And if you're not signed up yet, at just £1.50 per month, why not give it a go!
Help people walk to your location using the new walkit.com widgets
Got a 'how to find us' section of your website? Running an event and want to help people get there on foot?
Our new 'link to us' widgets and links, that come in all shapes and sizes, are here to help.
You can generate your own here: http://walkit.com/link-to-us-widget/
Below are some examples:
If the Queen wanted to help people walk to Buck Pal, she could use this:
or if she didn't have space on her website for a widget, she could just use a text link:
Find out how to walk to Buckingham Palace
Or she might prefer to be left in peace, and help people get walking directions away from Buck Pal, using this:
or this:
Find out how to walk from Buckingham Palace to another location
She may want to encourage her staff to take a healthy lunchtime walk, using this:
or this:
Do a circular walk from 'Buckingham Palace' at pace 4.0 mph (fast) for 1 hour
She may wish to encourage Dave to walk to their weekly meetings by sending him the walking route:
Walking directions from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace
Or she might think she'd just like to upload a mini walkit.com route planner for the royal website:
So there you go – a variety of widgets and links, from 120 to 300 pixels wide, for all your urban walking needs.
Visit http://walkit.com/link-to-us-widget/ to generate your own versions.
Do let us know how you get on.
Results of the walkit.com 2010 user survey - are men lazier than women?
Very many thanks to all 777 of you who completed our annual user survey in May.
We're once again really pleased with the results – see graphs below.
Some things to note in terms of the behaviour change we're catalysing:- 75.9% of respondents say that walkit.com has encouraged them (at least once) to switch to walking from another mode of transport
- As a result of using walkit.com, the following % of respondents say they are either 'always' or 'often' now walking instead of taking a:
- Car – 26.5%
- Taxi – 35.3%
- Tube/metro/subway – 49.5%
- Bus – 52.5%
- Train – 24.3%
- 53.6% of respondents say they are taking at least an extra hour of exercise per week as a result of using walkit.com
- They are self-selecting respondents (not a random sample)
- Over half the respondents were using the service in London
Finally – many more women than men seem to be using walkit.com (see final chart). It could be tempting to deduce that more men than women are just bone idle, but there must be other factors at work here… If you've got thoughts (and here are some theories), please leave a comment below.
Charts
(apologies for font size)
Win a mywalkit+ account!
We're giving you the chance to win your very own mywalkit+ account for 12 months (worth £15). mywalkit+ allows you to personalise your walking speeds, save your walking routes, monitor how far you have walked over a week, month or year, and keep track of your carbon savings or weight loss.
This competition is exclusively on twitter – to enter, simply keep an eye out for our competition launch tweet on Wednesday 7th July (which will read “WIN A #MYWALKIT+ ACCOUNT! Retweet this message before midnight 14.7.10 to be in with a chance. Details http://walkit.com/blog/”) and retweet it before midnight on Wednesday 14th July 2010. It's that simple!
A winner will be chosen at random from all those that retweet our post before the closing date. The winner will then be contacted via twitter, with details of how to claim their prize.
The prize is a 12 month subscription to mywalkit+. There is no cash alternative to this prize. The winner will be announced on twitter, on our blog and in our newsletter.
Competition! Submit a 'city sunshine' photo for a chance to feature on our home page!
We're pleased to announce the launch of our brand new monthly photo competition
Each month we'll suggest a different theme for photos to take whilst out walking, and simply ask you to upload them to our facebook fan page, or send them to us as a twitpic or by email. At the end of the month the walkit.com team will decide their favourite, and this will then appear on the home page for 24 hours, as a blog post, as well as being featured in our monthly newsletter.
The theme for July is 'City Sunshine', and the deadline is Saturday July 31.
To enter, simply upload your photograph to the album 'City Sunshine', which can be found on our facebook fan page here: http://tinyurl.com/2ugjqye. Or, if you prefer, you can send us your picture as a twitpic to @walkitcom, or simply email it to photo@walkit.com. Don't forget to tell us when and where the photo was taken.
After the closing date, the walkit.com team will decide their favourite photo, and inform the winner via twitter, facebook or email (depending on how the entry was made). Details of the winner, and their winning picture, will then be published on the blog and in our newsletter. Please note that we may have to crop or resize your photo.
Get walking and get snapping – and good luck!
World Cup puts a 3pm dent in walkit.com's traffic
walkit.com can help you through the tube strike!
The London tube strike is going ahead for 48 hours from 19:00 Wednesday according to the BBC.
The strike by tube maintenance workers is expected to hit the Northern, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines – though TfL claims it “plans to run a full service“.
If you, or anyone you know, may be affected, we hope our service will help ease the pain.
Do your mates a favour and let them know about walkit.com! Take the uncertainty out of your journey, enjoy the sun, and get fit into the bargain.
Pedestrian countdowns at traffic lights - TfL gets its priorities all wrong
As part of a £750k Transport for London trial, US-style pedestrian countdown timers are being added to 8 junctions across London (please excuse my slightly shoddy picture):
- Research has shown that many pedestrians assume the green man display is the only safe time to cross the road. In fact the blackout period continues to give people the right of way to complete their crossings.
- Because Pedestrian Countdown shows exactly how much time is left to cross, pedestrians are less likely to panic and speed up, or stop in the middle of the road.
- A recent off-street public trial of the technology showed that over 85% of pedestrians felt safer and more confident when crossing the road with a countdown display.
- Pedestrian Countdown will also help to smooth traffic flow by giving some time back to drivers, motorcyclists and cyclists.
“Living Streets believes that such a move is an expensive red herring, which could hinder pedestrian safety, make pedestrians feel rushed and unwelcome whilst crossing the road, and goes against the Mayor’s wish to see more people walking. The measure is clearly aimed at getting motor traffic moving quickly rather than improving the walkability of London’s streets.”
The irony is that just a few hundred metres/yards from the pedestrian countdown in the picture above is this junction:
Forget a pedestrian countdown, there's no pedestrian crossing at all! You've got to take your life in your hands and just go for it – and you frequently see scared and bewildered pedestrians doing just that.
TfL, you've got your priorities all wrong.
