140 Cities in Maine, L.A.'s Olympic Committee, and NYC: The Urban Tool That's About to Change Everything

"Together with a team of researchers, Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has built what he says is the first complete model of pedestrian activity in New York City-and it's a model that can now be applied to any U.S. city. The model, which maps foot traffic across all sidewalks, crosswalks and footpaths in NYC during peak periods, reveals surprising patterns about the way people move around the city."

"Over the past decades, transportation agencies have become experts at modeling traffic and predicting vehicle flows, but as Sevtsuk points out in a study accompanying the model that was published in the journal Nature Cities, 'what gets counted, counts.' The amount of transportation infrastructure funding that states receive from the Federal Highway Administration, for example, relies on vehicle miles traveled in that state."

"If cities could count the number of pedestrians that walked across their streets, they could steer more federal money into urban, people-oriented infrastructure. But while car domination in the U.S. has long relied on t"

New York City prioritizes walking, with 41% of trips made on foot compared to 28% by car, and aims for 80% of trips via walking, biking, or transit by 2050. However, pedestrian movement has remained largely unmapped until MIT researchers, led by Andres Sevtsuk, developed the first comprehensive model of pedestrian activity in NYC. This model maps foot traffic across all sidewalks, crosswalks, and footpaths during peak periods, revealing surprising patterns about movement and identifying vulnerability hotspots for vehicle crashes. The research highlights a critical gap in American transportation planning: while agencies excel at modeling vehicle traffic, pedestrian data remains underutilized. Federal funding mechanisms favor car-dependent states based on vehicle miles traveled, disadvantaging urban pedestrian infrastructure investment. Quantifying pedestrian activity could redirect federal resources toward people-oriented urban infrastructure.

Read at Inc