Comfort is a major requirement in planning pedestrian facilities. Pedestrians walk where they feel comfortable and when they do not feel at ease, they walk elsewhere. A typical example is that filthy, distressed, or too narrow sidewalks induce pedestrians to walk on carriageways. This behaviour jeopardizes road safety and highly dangerous to most users, leave them vulnerable. Unsuitable pavements can be the result of irregular maintenance operations to restore evenness after shock damage, weather phenomena, installation of equipment (e.g., posts, fences, urban furniture) with a reduction of walkable surface, or substandard repair work on pavements and patches due to emergency operations. These problems can be solved with an appropriate maintenance management system, which optimizes financial resources to make smart decisions about how to intervene with an adequate and lasting maintenance operation. This paper defines an evaluation index for sidewalk conditions as a part of an efficient set-up of a Sidewalk Management System, which is similar to the better known Road Management System. The study relies on surveys, as well as the classification and analysis of sidewalk distresses. The authors adapted an index already standardized by ASTM for roads and airports: the Pavement Condition Index (PCI). PCI has been modified to consider the specific types on the sidewalks studied within this paper. To validate the method, a case study of a residential district in Rome, Italy, was carried out. The chosen area lacks regular maintenance and has therefore resulted in a network of unsafe sidewalks. Frequent detour routes were surveyed and related to the level of distresses within a general assessment of safety. This study concentrates on sidewalks with flexible pavements because this type of pavement is the only one adopted in the survey areas and, in general, throughout Italy

Walking and transit are the backbone of sustainable mobility. Bus stops not only represent the connection between the two, but are also central in dictating the attractiveness of the latter. Accessibility of bus stops becomes, then, pivotal in increasing both attractiveness and sustainability of public transport. The paper describes a multi-step methodology to evaluate bus stops’ accessibility starting from a cluster of seven indicators describing objective and subjective features influencing passengers’ choice toward a given bus stop. The indicators are weighed by a questionnaire submitted to experts. Finally, a multicriteria analysis is developed to obtain a final score describing univocally the accessibility of each stop. Outcomes are mapped and a case study in Rome is reported as an example, with 231 bus and tram stops assessed accordingly. Results shows the relevance of the urban network and environment in evaluating the accessibility and in promoting more sustainable mobility patterns. Research innovation relies on the possibility to merge data from different fields into a specific GIS map and easily highlight for each bus stop the relationships between built environment, passengers’ comfort, and accessibility, with the concluding goal to provide advanced knowledge for further applications.

The Walking Suitability Index of the Territory–T-WSI is an innovative methodology to assess walkability. Unlike other methods and tools in this field designed to evaluate walkability on given origin-destination paths, T-WSI is conceived for area-wide assessments, typically at the neighborhood level. This can be achieved by visual surveys to collect data, which are easy to perform at street level, their further process via an algorithm, and their aggregation to assess the walking performance levels of the test area. The paper describes such methodology, which includes the development of 12 indicators associated with four main evaluation categories (Practicability, Safety, Urbanity and Appeal), and its application to a case study in a medium-size town in central Italy. Results are described and elaborated to highlight T-WSI’s contribution to help decision makers in the urban governance process, typically in the fields of land use, mobility management and maintenance, coherently with the research objective to enlarge the potential of walkability methodologies thus far available up to area-level assessment.

The world is facing new challenges due to the SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2) virus outbreak identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The aim of this paper is to investigate and discuss how cities are being managed in the anti-pandemic “new normal”. And this in light of unexpected phenomena such as: the on-going modal shift from public transport to private modes vs the new momentum gained by walking, and social lifestyles dictated by confinement first and now by unregulated behavior, also affecting land use. Add to this unpreparedness of pre-pandemic transport policies and the new emerging opportunities; the fresh directions for research and development, for example in the field of urban mobility management. With the additional goal to contribute to further advance the research, the paper also clearly shows that the crisis can be overcome only by considering different fields of action and by considering our common past.