In urban planning and transportation research, indices have been developed to measure the walkability of neighborhoods based on land-use and transportation characteristics. Despite the extensive work on the development of walkability measures, the empirical validation of the measures has received only limited attention. The aim of this study is to test assumptions made in existing walkability indices. Based on a national neighborhood data set combined with three years of national travel survey data from the Netherlands, the relationships between physical neighborhood characteristics and walking frequency are identified through regression analysis. In the regression model, distance to supermarket, number of daily goods stores within 1 km, number of cafeterias within 1 km, total inland water, land use for residential buildings, and high urban density were found to be significant. Our analysis indicates that existing indices only partly capture variation in walkability. We find that mismatches emerge on the level of both the selection and weighting of variables. Based on the results we identify ways to improve existing indices to measure walkability.

在城市规划和交通研究中，已经开发出了基于土地利用和交通特征来衡量社区步行能力的指标。尽管在开发步行性措施方面进行了大量工作，但对措施的经验验证仅受到了有限的关注。这项研究的目的是测试现有步行指数中的假设。基于全国邻里数据集以及来自荷兰的三年全国旅行调查数据，通过回归分析确定了物理邻里特征与步行频率之间的关系。在回归模型中，距超市的距离，1公里以内的日用品商店的数量，1公里以内的自助餐厅的数量，内陆水总量，住宅建筑物的土地使用情况，发现城市密度高是很重要的。我们的分析表明，现有指标仅部分记录了步行性的变化。我们发现不匹配出现在变量选择和加权的水平上。根据结果​​，我们确定了改进现有指标以测量步行性的方法。