Sustainable travel was always an interest of mine and then, in one of my first jobs, I had the opportunity to work on pedestrian movement at the new Wembley Stadium – and that was that.

When I joined TfL in 2005, I was leading a research team. In the interview they'd said they wanted to look at pedestrians, which is why I was keen to do the job. Pedestrians therefore became my focus and the first thing we looked at was how to assess exactly how many people were walking around London. We created a strategy to pick places in London as sample sites and we then used automatic counters to count the number of people and started to build up an idea of where people were walking, what time of day, what day of the week, etc.

Once we had the data, we were able to start exploring modelling, which was new for this type of environment, and make changes to see what happened. Being able to quantify the change gave us an evidence base for making changes to the pedestrian experience.

Then I led TfL’s pedestrian modelling for the London 2012 Olympics. We assessed access and routes from stations to venues, which helped spectators get to their events comfortably and quickly. That led to a lot of improvements to the pedestrian network: some were temporary and taken out again after the Games, but a lot were left in place and were a great legacy gain from the event.

People are now seeing the benefits of a thought-through walking infrastructure, but you still come up against the attitude of not wanting to anger drivers or not wanting to put car drivers out. But having that evidence does prove a point.

A lot of the work we’ve done has looked at how people use a town centre or shopping street, so we tend to look at things in terms of the environment as a whole and the routes pedestrians use. You might place a great crossing somewhere, but is it in the right place and does it link the right things? Is it accessible for all? Is it designed for all users, not just men? We tend to look at things at a slightly higher level and then colleagues will design the infrastructure features where we think they would be most effective.

The recent public discussions of the 15-minute city have been interesting and it’s great to see the subject being debated. However, we’re still in the early stages of fully understanding what a 15-minute city looks like. Linking things up in neighbourhoods and towns involves a lot of investment and while we might see improvements around an area or in a neighbourhood, it's not often looked at on a larger scale. We need to start looking at networks on a more strategic level, so the quality of improvements is more consistent along whole routes to encourage more and longer walk trips.

For example, we sometimes find a lovely, brand new railway station, but the paths outside aren't wide enough or accessible for all users, or the crossings aren't in the right place. It’s important to link up the infrastructure and public transport, making sure that it works at that more strategic level for everyone.

Brett Little was in conversation with Craig Thomas.

As May is National Walking Month and Walk to School Week takes place from 15-19 May, CIHT is encouraging members to look at some of the best school streets initiatives and research around on CIHT’s Spotlight on Walk to School and School Streets.

Words by Brett Little, UK People Movement Lead at Arup

As May is National Walking Month and Walk to School Week takes place from 15-19 May, CIHT is encouraging members to look at some of the best school streets initiatives and research around on CIHT’s Spotlight on Walk to School and School Streets.