Walk and Roll to Make King County’s Sidewalks More Accessible

A map of Washington state showing statewide pedestrian network coverage, with black lines indicating where there are sidewalks and points marking crossings, curb ramps, and walkability features. An inset zoom highlights a dense, connected network of pedestrian infrastructure in downtown Seattle, including streets near Pike Place Market, the waterfront, and the International District. Callouts indicate the coverage of the completed pedestrian dataset for Washington state. There are 593,000 sidewalks and 351,000 curbs in the data, covering nearly 12,000 square km.

Our spring walk starts at a corner that looks, at first glance, perfectly ordinary.
A bus stop sits just ahead, close enough to read the schedule if you squint. There’s a bench, a patch of gravel, the usual signs of a place people are meant to wait. Cars move steadily past. It feels like an easy walk.

Participants in a Walk & Roll event in unincorporated Pierce County travel along the shoulder of a high-speed roadway, illustrating how gaps in sidewalk infrastructure force pedestrians and wheelchair users to navigate alongside traffic.

We step forward, and the sidewalk ends.

There’s a narrow path worn into the grass where others have tried before us. A curb drops sharply with no ramp. To reach the stop, you’d have to step into the roadway for a stretch and then climb back up again. One person in the group says they wouldn’t try it with a walker. Someone else mentions a stroller. Another person, more quietly, says they would just stay home.

We are standing less than 150 feet from the bus stop. It is a small gap. But it is enough.

Moments like this are easy to miss when you’re driving by, and easy to forget if you don’t encounter them every day. For years, they were also hard to see in the data. Maps could show where sidewalks existed, but not whether they connected to anything meaningful. Agencies could count curb ramps and crossings, but those numbers didn’t tell you whether someone could actually get from home to a grocery store, a clinic, or a bus stop without running into a barrier like this one.

Mapping the system

A few years ago, the Washington state legislature asked a simple but far-reaching question: What if we could see the whole system? Not just pieces of it, but every sidewalk, every crossing, and how they connect (or disconnect) across the entire state.

That question led to a statewide effort, carried out by the University of Washington’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, to map the pedestrian network in its entirety. It was an ambitious undertaking. There are tens of thousands of miles of pathways, from dense urban neighborhoods to small rural towns, and it was completed in just under two years. For the first time, Washington now has a single, connected picture of how people can move on foot or by mobility device.

When you look at that map, certain patterns begin to emerge. Some areas are well connected, with multiple ways to reach nearby destinations. Others appear intact at first glance, but closer inspection reveals that they are effectively cut off. Sidewalks loop within a neighborhood but don’t connect outward. Crossings are missing at key points. The system, as a whole, doesn’t quite hold together.

At the Taskar Center, we began to describe these places as “accessibility islands.” It’s a useful term, but it doesn’t quite capture what it feels like on the ground. Standing at that corner, looking at the bus stop you can’t quite reach, you don’t think of yourself as living on an island. You just know that something that should be simple isn’t.

The map helps us see these patterns at scale. But it doesn’t tell us everything. 

And that’s where walking or rolling comes back in.

Walk and roll events fill in the gaps

In communities across the state, small groups are beginning to walk their neighborhoods together—sometimes with advocacy organizations, sometimes just with neighbors—and compare what they notice. They stop at places like this corner. They point out where the path disappears, where a crossing feels too fast, where a curb ramp sends you in the wrong direction. Someone describes the route they used to take but no longer do. Someone else explains why they avoid a particular block after dark.

These are not dramatic revelations. They are small, specific observations. But when they are shared, they begin to fill in the gaps between what the map shows and what people experience.

There is something else these walks make visible, too, and it is more subtle. Not just where people go, but where they don’t. A route that feels uncertain or unsafe simply disappears from someone’s routine. The trip isn’t made. The errand is postponed. From the outside, it can look like a lack of demand. In reality, it is often a lack of support.

People don’t go where they don’t feel they can.

One of the goals of the statewide mapping effort was not just to create a snapshot, but to build something that could keep up with change. Sidewalks are repaired. Construction reroutes foot traffic. Conditions shift block by block. A map that isn’t updated quickly becomes outdated.

Get involved: Take a walk, pay attention, and share what you see

To bridge that gap, our team developed a simple tool that people can use while they’re out walking. It’s called AVIV ScoutRoute, and it runs on a phone. You don’t need to be a planner or an engineer to use it. If you notice a missing curb ramp, a blocked sidewalk, or a crossing that feels unsafe, you can record it on the spot. That observation becomes part of the shared dataset, where it can be reviewed and used to guide future improvements.

In some places, agencies are already using the tool to coordinate their own work. They’re sending staff or contractors out to verify conditions and update records in real time. In others, residents are beginning to contribute what they see, adding a layer of lived experience that no aerial image can capture. Over time, the goal is for the map to become less of a static record and more of a living one, shaped by the people who use these streets every day. For now, we are working with community members (you, too, can organize a meet-up!) and advocacy groups to have walk/roll events like the one we described above, which was a collaboration with the NonDrivers Alliance and Tacoma on the Go.

By the time we circle back to where we started, the corner looks the same. The bus stop hasn’t moved. The gap is still there. But it no longer feels like an isolated inconvenience. It feels like part of a larger system that can be understood, and with enough attention, improved.

It is still just a short stretch of missing sidewalk. But it is also the difference between someone getting where they need to go and someone deciding it isn’t worth the risk.

If you find yourself noticing places like this in your own neighborhood, you’re not alone. The invitation now is simple: Take a walk, pay attention, and, if you’re able, share what you see. Whether it’s through a community walkabout or a quick note in an app, those small observations are helping shape a clearer picture of how our communities work—and how they can work better for everyone.

The map is no longer the missing piece. What happens next depends on what we do with it.

If you’re interested in learning more, log into AccessMap.app on any device, or send a note to uwtcat@uw.edu.

Sponsors: Work on AccessMap was supported by the Complete Trip ITS4US program by USDOT JPO through agreement #693JJ32250014. Work on the Washington state sidewalks inventory was funded by the Washington state legislaure. Walking events additionally supported by the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen school.