To determine how connected and accessible the WAMPO region’s sidewalk network is, WAMPO staff developed a comprehensive map of all sidewalks in the region.
The map’s initial development phase was from April to October 2022 and began by using publicly available aerial/satellite imagery. WAMPO staff manually traced the locations of sidewalks and crosswalks into an ArcGIS feature class, creating a comprehensive map of the entire sidewalk network within the WAMPO region.
The ArcGIS feature class distinguishes between sidewalks and crosswalks. Sidewalks are adjacent to a road but do not cross over it.
The map also displays different types of bikeways. There are eight different bikeway classifications on the map, including the four classifications of on-road bikeways (bicycle lanes, marked/signed shared lanes, bicycle boulevards, and paved shoulders) and four classifications of off-road bikeways (shared-use paths, sidepaths, unpaved trails, and mountain-bicycle trails). For example, sidepaths are road-adjacent, above-the-curb, paved paths at least 8 feet wide, accommodating bicycle riders and pedestrians. Meanwhile, shared-use paths are similar in design to sidepaths but are not road-adjacent.
WAMPO is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Wichita metropolitan region. MPOs are federally required regional policy bodies in urbanized areas with populations over 50,000. MPOs recognize the critical links between transportation and other societal goals such as economic health, air quality, social equity, environmental resource consumption, and overall quality of life.
Locally, the Wichita Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (WAMPO) is responsible, in cooperation with the State of Kansas and Wichita Transit, for carrying out the metropolitan transportation planning process in 22 cities and 3 counties in South Central Kansas.
The full sidewalk map is available to the public on ArcGIS Online through the following link:
https://bit.ly/WAMPOSidewalkMapUpdate
Original source can be found here
