Slow Ways and Walking Networks

There is an unpleasent feeling when you discover something that is such a perfect match to your interests you feel guilty you hadn’t already discovered it. “I should have known about this!” you chastise yourself, before spending several troubling moments wondering about all the other things you should know about, but don’t.

This is a post about one of those things.

The thing is Slow Ways, which describes itself as:

“Slow Ways is an initiative to create a national network of walking routes connecting all of Great Britain’s towns and cities as well as thousands of villages.” 

I’ve been thinking about mapping lately. Particularly, what sort of map would be most useful for the modern American pedestrian. Like everyone, I’ve always used Google Maps, which is, if we are being honest, one of the absolute wonders of human civilization. Google Maps is accurate, it clearly shows where you are, it has satellite imagery, and best of all it has Streetview.  It is, and I mean this with all of my heart, amazing.

When it comes to walking, however, it’s not amazing. It doesn’t show which streets have sidewalks. The suggested walking routes are usually sufficient, but rarely good. I haven’t found a better option yet, although I’ve been playing around with OpenStreetMap alternatives.  

As a pedestrian, I’ve always thought it would be nice for there to be some kind of guidebook, or website that told you, the best routes for walking in an unfamiliar area. Or simply the best route for getting to downtown. But, as far as I know, there isn’t. AllTrails covers some of this, but its pretty focused on trails used exclusively for Hiking and recreation. Of course, most pedestrians develop their own set-piece walks, well understood paths for traveling from A to B. It also seems difficult to create a full walking map of a city. Rating each blockface, would be tedious, and not actually that useful.

I came across Slow Ways in this Chris Arnade post. I googled it, found the website, and couldn’t figure out what I was looking at.

 Their website looks like this:

Depicted is a network. In the nodes and edges sense.

If you want to link all of Great Britain (which is Slow Ways goal) a network is much easier to think about, than simply all the possible paths and trails. The 2,500 nodes in the network are “primary settlements”, “selected because of their population size or their cultural, transport or local importance.” Since the focus of the project is to create a national network of walking paths, it makes sense to connect towns, and other places of importance. The overall effect is more like an airline route map, than a traditional trail map, but it’s a really good idea.

Each edge is then allowed to have multiple routes listed on it. For example, Winford-Bristol has Winbri one and Winbri two.  Both are about 8 miles, which gives a sense of the distance between the nodes, and the scale of what Slow Ways is trying to do. The names come from the two nodes being connected, Winford-Bristol, becomes WinBri.

There are a myriad of ways to connect any two nodes and Slow Ways has come up with a list of criteria for routes to have. They are:

This is just about the best “what should a walking route have” list that I’ve ever seen. It has a bit of a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs vibe to it, first safety and accessibility, then ease and convenience, and lastly pleasantness and beauty.

The routes themselves are then reviewed and rated by volunteers. This is a massive project and seems to be Slow Ways main project right now. Every route has a few different characteristics. The basics: distance, ascent, and descent. Then there is a star rating, from one to five stars. A lot of the routes have low stars, which suggests that many are difficult to actually complete easily and comfortably.

There are various measures of how complete the Slow Ways rating process is, which I think are depending on how many people have reviewed the route.

The Grade and Access are “Two grades – route surface and route access – are being piloted and tested to explore what is most useful to people with a range of mobility requirements.” The first the “Grade, rates the surface of the path:

The second score ranks Access.

Each routing also has reviews and photos, which are probalby going to be the most helpful thing for those attempting the routes. These include what you would imagine: photos, recommendations, and brief descriptions.

I love all of this. A network of walking paths routes. A community of people devoted to maintaining, expanding, and improving the system.  The network is clever, the idea is amazing, the execution seems to be working.

It still seems like a massive, difficult undertaking, even in relatively pedestrian friendly Britain. I don’t think it could be replicated at any sort of large scale in the United States. If nothing else the distances are too big, a 10 mile walk out of town from where I live leaves me pretty much nowhere.

A similar network could work on a smaller scale. A network of routes around a city or metro area would be entirely doable, and genuinely helpful. In some areas with substantial trail systems, and nearby towns you might be able to expand further.

Happy Walking!

-Chris