2025 City of Boston Sidewalk Condition Pilot

Overview

In April of 2025, Organic Navigation LLC assessed sidewalk conditions over two City of Boston neighborhoods: Jamaica Plain and Back Bay. This project page documents the results.

Content

1. Service Fact Sheet
2. Collection Times
3. Data Collection Photos
4. GIS Condition Maps
5. Metrics Details

Acknowledgements: We're grateful to the City of Boston for their trust and collaboration throughout this project, Stantec for facilitating this pilot as part of their Asset Management Services to the City, and the MassDOT Survey Office for MaCORS access.

Service Fact Sheet

Organic Navigation - Sidewalk Condition Mapping Service Fact Sheet.pdf

4 MB

Collection Times

	JAMAICA PLAIN	BACK BAY
Date	April 16, 2025	April 17, 2025
Distance Covered	3.85 miles	3.65 miles
Collection Time	1 hr 37 min	1 hr 37 min

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Collection time was the same for both neighborhoods. Average pace was 2.3 mph.

Data Collection Photos

Pictures of Organic Navigation data collection campaign of Jamaica Plain and Back Bay neighborhoods for City of Boston sidewalk condition pilot.

Top-down and forward-facing imagery is used to visually document the conditions measured during data collection. This is a sample from the City of Boston Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

GIS Sidewalk Condition Maps

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Use the "Open in Map Viewer" icon to explore all map layers.

Jamaica Plain Neighborhood

Back Bay Neighborhood

Metric Details

Map Layer	Values	Comment
Sidewalk Condition Index	0-100 (larger # is better)	Fine Sampling (~ every 2 ft) and Block-Level (averaged over block)
Surface Material Classification	Concrete, Asphalt, Asphalt-patch, Brick, Granite, Mix
Bump or Trip Hazard Experienced	geo location	Candidates classified by shock experienced
Slope Experienced	% Forward Slope, % Cross Slope	All positive values
Rolling Quality Experienced	Good, Fair, Poor	Measured by vibration experienced (Quantiles q = (0.85, 0.95, 1))
Surface Rating	Good, Fair, Poor	Visual rating of surface

Sidewalk Condition Index Scoring

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The sidewalk condition score for each point is the average of the metric scores corresponding to that location.

Metric	Score Assigned
Surface Material Classification	Asphalt-Patch: 50, Otherwise: 100
Bump or Trip Hazard Experienced	Identified: 0, Otherwise: 100
Forward or Cross Slope	NA - excluded from scoring
Rolling Quality Experienced	Good: 100, Fair: 50, Poor: 0
Surface Rating	Good: 100, Fair: 50, Poor: 0