The Walk Friendly Communities program announced this week that Washington, D.C., has retained its gold status designation as a walk-friendly city.
D.C. was the only community given gold status during the program’s latest round of designations.
Over the past two years, the D.C. Department of Transportation has added 1.2 miles of new sidewalk throughout all eight wards, closing 20 percent of the gaps in the city’s 1,500-mile sidewalk network.
In addition, new infrastructure such as the new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge has been developed with robust pedestrian transit facilities that connect to other transit modes, and the Street Smart campaigns have also grown to include more collaboration with neighboring jurisdictions. Currently, nearly 14 percent of D.C. residents walk to work, the second-highest percentage in the nation among large cities.