Alexandria Recognized as a Walk-Friendly Community

While King Street is being recognized as one of Tuesday evening, the city of Alexandria as a whole was recently named one of the country’s top walk-friendly communities.

Alexandria was awarded silver-level status by the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center in its new list of walk-friendly communities released on Sept. 22. The list recognizes cities for success in working to improve conditions related to walking, including safety, mobility, access and comfort.

Alexandria was recognized for its Safe Routes to School program and employment of multiple city employees devoted exclusively toward pedestrian and bicycling efforts. The PBIC also recognized Alexandria for its sidewalk policies, including its requirement that all arterial and collector streets have sidewalks on both sides.

The city was also lauded for its wayfinding program, historical walking tours, greenways and encouragement of new dense, mixed-use development to create walkable communities.

The Walk-Friendly Community program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration and FedEx.

The other communities recognized were:

Gold Level

• Chicago
• Minneapolis
• San Francisco

Silver Level

• Philadelphia
• Santa Monica, Calif.

Bronze Level

• Cary, N.C.
• Corvallis, Ore.
• Davidson, N.C.
• Lee’s Summit, Mo.