Background and Purpose
The health benefits of walking can be expressed in terms of improved environmental and personal health, reduced traffic congestion, enhanced quality of life, economic rewards, and increased social justice. The Walk Friendly Communities (WFC) program is a nationwide program with the goal of encouraging towns and cities throughout the U.S. to establish or recommit to a high priority for encouraging and supporting more safe walking. Developed by the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC), the purpose of this program is twofold: to recognize existing walkable communities and to provide a framework for communities seeking to improve their walkability. This program if free for all cities in the U.S. and provides information, feedback, and guidance regardless of whether they qualify for recognition as a WFC.

Description
The WFC Community Assessment Tool provides an objective measurement tool to recognize communities that have achieved high levels of walking and low rates of pedestrian crashes while also acknowledging communities that are making progress in achieving these goals through policies, projects, and programs.  Since there are many ways to achieve these outcomes, a range of questions in this tool captures the variety of factors that affect walkability. The Assessment Tool was developed to reflect best practices and research for creating highly walkable places that encourage people to integrate walking into each day. The structure of the Assessment Tool is to provide a framework for creating walkable communities, even if they do not apply to the program. Each question in the Assessment includes research and resources to demonstrate how this may affect walking (e.g. an engineering treatment has a lower crash rate or mixed-use development has a demonstrated higher level of walking) and examples of how other cities are implementing these measures.As this tool is based on engineering, planning, education/encouragement, enforcement, and evaluation measures, completing this Assessment requires collaboration between government agencies, private not-for-profits, and the private sector, thus building stronger relationships in the community. Another advantage of this tool is that it creates a great internal resource for communities by documenting all walking-related programs, projects, and policies in one place.After applying for a Walk Friendly Community designation, communities will receive specific suggestions and resources on how to make needed changes to increase walking and safety. These suggestions include information on how prioritize improvements and locations in order to have the biggest impact. Suggestions include information to be used by both government agencies and residents, including planners, public works, public health officials, transit agencies, schools, developers, and advocates.This presentation will begin by discussing the foundation and methods behind the development of the program and how to comprehensively evaluate a Walk Friendly Community. Then, examples of collaboration within communities for creating walkable places and highlights of the most successful initiatives from WFCs around the country will be highlighted.

Lessons Learned
The WFC program is continuously updating its feedback to provide the best examples and models from WFC communities around the country. in addition, the WFC staff is heavily involved in research and information dissemination through the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center and use this knowledge to ensure that the Assessment Tool and feedback are current with the latest research.

Conclusions and Implications
The WFC program information is not static and we strive to make provide a comprehensive evaluation for all communities on how they can increase the number of people walking and improve the safety of walking for all of their residents.

Next Steps
The latest research and best practices are used to update the Community Assessment Tool as well as the feedback on an annual basis.

Support / Funding Source
FedEx, Federal Highway Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention