Last year, he walked across England. Next year it’ll be Wales. Dave Ramsay, city manager of Kirkland, Washington, is a self-professed “walking nut” who loves long-distance treks, including marathons.

“I find it great on a personal health level, but it’s also a great way to get around the community,” he says. For Ramsay, walking and biking are not just hobbies because there are five great public policy objectives that they can help accomplish. First, and perhaps most obviously, it’s great exercise, which improves public health. The second benefit is enhanced public safety. Walkable and bike-friendly communities help you get more “eyes on the street.”

Third, biking and walking are great ways to build community, getting residents to meet each other informally. Fourth, facilitating trips by foot and by bike helps reduce auto trips and traffic congestion. Finally, encouraging nonmotorized transportation is a key strategy in supporting environmental stewardship. There aren't many strategies that you can get as many bangs for your buck.

Kirkland lacks a full-time bicycle-pedestrian coordinator, so it has benefited all the more from the Active Living Task Force it established in 2007. The task force is made up of representatives from the city manager's office and the departments of public works, parks and community services, planning and community development and the police as well as from public boards and commissions and diverse community organizations. The goal of the task force is to support local strategies that aim to reinject activity back into daily routines. Each member of the staff team is busy with other responsibilities, so it's a challenge to stay focused on a collaborative community health effort, says Ramsay. The city manager notes that those staff members who are personally committed to active living bring a great deal of passion to their work as a team. As a result, the Active Living Task Force meetings generate “lots of energy and excitement, and way too many ideas

To channel that energy, the city focuses on coming up with a realistic and strategic work program. Rather than planning events, which consume a lot of time, the team invests more effort into such long-term projects such as producing a map, designing a walk, or coming up with a policy that encourages more walking and biking. It also helps that Kirkland is a relatively "green" city and that active transportation fits well with the city's sense of community. Kirkland has integrated healthy living into such policy documents as the comprehensive plan, land use regulations, its non-motorized transportation plan, and its capital improvement plan.

Kirkland's skinny-street policy, for example, tries to make streets narrow whenever possible. Kirkland was also the first city in Washington to adopt a Complete Streets Ordinance. The policy ensures that transportation investments in the city are accessible by diverse forms of transportation, not just cars. Instead of surrendering to "program-itis" Ramsay notes, the city's focus on policies allows it to change its way of doing business more systematically. Kirkland is recognized as a walkable place, and Ramsay is doing what he can to continue to improve that. We've done a lot of work on pedestrian safety, he says. Kirkland was one of the first cities to employ flashing crosswalks, which are currently embedded in the streets in nearly 30 locations around the community.

According to the city Web site, Kirkland was also the first city in the United States to provide pedestrian flags to help people to cross the street safely. Several years ago, to encourage wider use of the PedFlags, Kirkland engaged a social marketing expert who advised changes in the logo and color that have significantly increased the flags use. They are effective because they make pedestrians take an active role in their own safety according to Ramsay. I just shudder when I see people cross streets. I see moms with their strollers, and seniors, and many of them seem to feel that they're in a protective halo, and that they're automatically safe. Cars go whizzing by. By having this flag, you are out there making contact with the driver. It's not a passive thing.

Kirkland has also mapped out neighborhood routes to encourage people to walk. To ensure that the maps are user friendly, they are designed in a handy size and are available online. But the city plans improvements here, too. They lack destinations, so they are more like exercise maps, says Ramsay. We believe that someone walking to a grocery store or bus stop is just as important as someone going around the track. Ramsay explains the new maps will show residents that within a short distance they can reach a library, a park, or restroom. Also on Kirkland's to-do list is a plan to train residents to perform walking audits, noting where sidewalks need improvement or which routes feel safest. One of the many clever ideas that Ramsay has collected in his research is the idea of using wayfinding signs to alert residents to preferred routes. While in England, for example, he observed that prominent colored arrows mean walkers don't even need a map. Kirkland has one such marked route, but Ramsay hopes it eventually will have four or five.

Kirkland has garnered its share of national attention for its efforts, and these have helped to reinforce the city's sense of identity as a healthy place. Among other recognition, the city won a national Environmental Protection Agency award for building a healthy community for active aging. Kirkland was also voted one of the 15 most walkable cities by Walking magazine. Ramsay joined ICMA's Active Living Ambassadors program several years ago, in part to collect more clever ideas from his peers and in part to share with others what he has learned in Kirkland. Despite these successes, it hasn't all been a bed of roses for Kirkland. These initiatives take a lot of work, and you often end up preaching to the converted, people who would walk anyway.

We're working on ways to get at that. One possible approach could be to look at other cities' projects. Seattle, for example, strategically closed off a street to cars, in order to increase pedestrian traffic. The city is also working with individual neighborhoods to sponsor walks. It's important to identify a destination, says Ramsay, such as a local shopping district where a sponsor might provide free items to encourage people to come out.

—Nadejda Mishkovsky Freelance Writer Coral Gables, Florida
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