The Amazing New Way to Improve Victoria's Pedestrian Spaces!
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about one of the issues I regularly see that can make it difficult to navigate some of our sidewalks, encroachment from bushes and trees. I also let you know about the City of Victoria’s Connect Victoria App, which is a great way to report issues you see and hope that the City does something about them. I did hear from some of you that you have had mixed experiences in using that app and seeing a prompt response.
One of the benefits of the Connect Victoria App, is that it takes advantage of all of the people in the city using the sidewalks. Of course, the app looks at much more than just pedestrian infrastructure and certainly there are going to be some subset of the population that will use the app incorrectly which may in turn cause a delay in seeing the issue fixed by the city. Apart from a notification that you have sent the report in there is no user feedback. If the challenge that is being a identified is some sort of sidewalk blockage, another citizen using a power chair will have no idea that there is an issue and may end up having to make a significant detour. This is a difficult challenge to overcome in a city where there may be more reports than staff can keep up with.
There is an answer though. For the last few years cyclists have been able to provide information on challenges or incidents that they see across the city through the website bikemaps.org, well actually way beyond the city actually with this great crowd sourced resource having input across North America and even in a number of other countries. That said, this is a home grown Victoria app and as such, we have a significantly higher number of reports than most other place. Last year I was lucky to be interviewed by the UVic team that developed the bikemaps app and they said that they wanted to build a similar site, but focused on pedestrian interactions and issues. Just two weeks ago, this site finally went live. When you go into the bikemaps app you see such a rich amount of information from the extensive amount of reports that have been made over the last few years ( I know there could be more, but still…) This new site is just a couple of weeks old and is called walkrollmap.org so it is going to need a little time to get caught up to the other site and this is where you come in.
Thinking back to the Connect Victoria app, the issue is that no one besides you and the City know that there is a problem on your block, but if you also enter that same info into the walkrollmap.org site, now anyone in the city can also see that there is a potential problem and can plan accordingly.
I have already put in a couple of issues near where I live and it would be great if you could add a couple of your own as you walk around the city. It is pretty easy to report something and it can provide such a rich amount of data for all of us. Though I am not sure whether City staff will be reviewing this yet (though I will ask), hopefully they will and perhaps align their priorities as things receive multiple reports or more significant challenging items arise.
This weekend is a great time to start reporting so get out there and try it out! I would love to hear any concerns or comments about it.