Local residents participate in Walkability Audit downtown
BY JOHN BRICE
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LAFAYETTE — Representatives from the East Alabama Regional Planning and Development Commission along with community leaders and local residents for a LaFayette Comprehensive Plan Walkability Audit early Tuesday, April 14. Those in attendance gathered outside the front entrance of the Chambers County Courthouse, and Planning and Development Director Eric Wright explained the importance of the Walkability Audit.
“What we are doing tonight is a Walkability Audit,” he said. “Over the process of the last several months we have looked at different facets of LaFayette, looked at different pieces of infrastructure and different systems. What we need to do to help the vision moving the community forward, and walkability is a really important part of that.”
Wright said people are often drawn to walkable downtowns.
“When you think about [the similarities between the places] where people like to go on vacation, those places are often in bigger cities or theme parks like Disney World,” he said. “Cities like Charleston, Savannah, New York, all of those places, what they have in common is people talk about how great it was to walk around, go see sights and not have to get in their car. They are able to go walk on foot or bike where it is really easy to go and safe. We all deserve those things in our communities where we live too.”
Wright said there are many health and social benefits to a walkable city.
“We know that walkability and the ability to move yourself improves mental health, physical health and improves economic outcomes,” he said. “All of the things that we want for our communities. One of the most important things it does is it builds relationships. You can’t have a relationship with your neighbor if you’re driving 35 miles per hour down a neighborhood street. What you can do is you can wave to your neighbor and say “hello” as you are walking up and down the street, walking your dog or taking your kids to school. We know that walkability and the ability to do that helps make communities become tighter knit and work together.”
Wright encouraged community members to consider where LaFayette could improve walkability.
“We know that while there are some great sidewalks and there is great connectivity downtown, we know that there are some great neighborhoods that have sidewalks, we also know that there is some gaps,” he said. “What we did a few months ago when we worked on our transportation chapter, we looked at some data that we had collected from satellite and from driving around. We identified some gaps, and we had you all ground truth that for us. Now we have dialed in even more specifically, and we want to see what that experience is like for people on the ground and not just from a car or from the air.”
With the orientation complete for the attendees, they were provided with walkability worksheets to make note of potential issues that they observed. After completing their walking studies around downtown as well as the area surrounding the high school, the group gathered on Alabama Avenue East to share their perspectives and observations.
“As part of the walk audit, what we wanted to do is to make sure that we ground truthed some things that we collected from other sources,” he said. “It really helps for us to get out, actually be pedestrians ourselves and get feedback from people who are experiencing that walking or biking themselves, rather than just driving by to see what is the accessibility of a ramp, that there is there a broken piece of sidewalk or a utility pole that might be in a place that prevents people from being able to walk through.”
Wright said he was pleased with the community response and values the perspectives of LaFayette citizens to help better cater to the Comprehensive Plan to the desires of those living in LaFayette.
“We are really pleased with the turnout,” he said. “We had folks from all ages and backgrounds here. I loved having some young people participate because we know that they have got a really important perspective on a plan that is designed to be for 20 years in the future. So having them involved was critical. Then we had different people from different perspectives all doing the different routes tonight.”
