Parthaa Bosu (L) India Director, Clean Air Asia receiving the recognition from Dr Rathan Kelkar, IAS, CEO, Centre for e-Governance, Govt of Karnataka and Abhijit Saxena, Founder & CEO, Mobilox
Ever felt that the walking environment in your neighborhood is not up to the mark and thought you should raise your voice against it? The one-of-a kind mobile application Walkability App allows one to evaluate a street according to the availability of footpaths, crossing locations, quality of crossings, safety from crime, and motorist behaviour. All the results of the evaluation are positioned on a map to help the community get an immediate view of the condition of walking in their cities.
Created by Clean Air Asia, the Walkability App was chosen among many entries at the mbillionth South Asia Awards 2014 in July, 2014. It was a finalist for the awards under the m-inclusion category, which focused on bridging society through multimedia and rich content using
mobiles.
The mBillionth Award is a dedicated platform to explore the latent potential of mobile and telecom sector across 8 countries in South Asia and was held at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on 18 July, 2014. The finalist certificate was presented by Dr Rathan Kelkar, CEO Centre for e-Governance, Government of Karnataka and Abhijit Saxena, Founder and CEO of Mobilox to Parthaa Bosu, India Director of Clean Air Asia after brief presentations by all finalists.
The walkability app idea was an offshoot of Clean Air Asia’s work on study of pedestrian conditions in more than 25 Asian cities. The work originated from the idea that citizens need a voice when it comes to basic walking facilities in their neighbourhoods and they have to be empowered with an audit tool to raise that voice.
The easy-to-use app asks 9 simple questions to the user with five options for each question. Each question deals with a specific element of a street such as availability of footpaths, availability and positioning of crossing location, quality of crossings (time of crossings, zebra crossings), amenities (benches, shade) obstructions (transformers, boards), safety from crime (safety perception of streets), and motorist behavior (attitude of drivers towards pedestrians). A score is associated with each situation and a final score is allotted to each audit.
The ratings possible with the new Walkability App help to benchmark streets, neighbourhoods
and cities. Benchmarking and rating will improve competitiveness among cities to showcase themselves as a walking friendly city, which is safe and secure for its citizens and tourists. Valuable information from over 100 cities from 30 countries has been received as of July, 2014.
In 2013, the app was chosen as a top 3 urban app in the AppMyCity! prize of the New Cities Foundation.
The free-to-download app is available on Android and iOS platforms and a new version for
Windows will also be available in the coming months.
Walkability Asia 
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