The development of a routable pavement network dataset to support active travel

Active travel (AT) networks have only recently become a priority for urban planners in many countries, and networks of spatial data and applications that use them are also lacking. Road networks have historically been used as a proxy for pedestrian networks, yet they are a poor one as human movement is much less constrained than that of motorised vehicles. This study presents a novel approach to producing an attribute-rich network for AT, together with a semi-automated method to produce a width-attributed pavement network from topographic mapping agency data (based on a case study of Ordnance Survey (OS) MasterMap data from the UK). A shortest path network routing application using Dijkstra’s algorithm is presented to demonstrate the possibilities of AT routing incorporating increased attribution. The paper concludes by firstly proposing additional steps to further enhance the attribution of the network and finally by describing the relevant policy implications of this work.