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A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, by wheelchair or with other Mobility aid. and often have a designated footpath for pedestrian traffic, called the sidewalk in North American English, the pavement in British English, and the footpath in Australian and New Zealand English. There are also footpaths not associated with ; these include rural paths and urban short cuts.
Historically, walking has been the main way people get around. In the early use of the word, pedestrian meant a "professional walker", or somebody who held a record for speed or endurance. With the advent of , it started to be used as an opposite: somebody who is not riding or driving.
As walking is a healthy and sustainable mode of transport, there are efforts to make cities more Walkability. For instance, by creating wider sidewalks, a pedestrian network, or restricting motor vehicles in city centres. Pedestrians are vulnerable and can be injured, for example when crossing thoroughfares. The rise of has decreased safety for pedestrians.
It was originally used, and can still be used today, as an adjective meaning plain or dull. The word pedestrian may have been used in middle French in the Recueil des Croniques et Anchiennes Istories de la Grant Bretaigne.
With the advent of cars at the beginning of the 20th century, the main story is that the cars took over, and "people chose the car", but there were many groups and movements that held on to walking as their preferred means of daily transport and some who organised to promote walking, and to counterbalance the widely-held view that often favoured cars, e.g. as related by Peter Norton.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, pedestrianism (walking) was non a popular spectator sport, just as equestrianism (riding) still is in places. One of the most famous pedestrians of that period was Captain Robert Barclay Allardice, known as "The Celebrated Pedestrian", of Stonehaven in Scotland. His most impressive feat was to walk every hour for 1000 hours, which he achieved between 1 June and 12 July 1809. This captured many people's imagination, and around 10,000 people came to watch over the course of the event. During the rest of the 19th century, many people tried to repeat this feat, including Ada Anderson who developed it further and walked a half-mile (800 m) each quarter-hour over the 1000 hours.
Since the 20th century, interest in walking as a sport has dropped. Racewalking is still an Olympic Games sport, but fails to catch public attention as it did. However major walking feats are still performed, such as the Land's End to John o' Groats walk in the United Kingdom, and the traversal of North America from coast to coast. The first person to walk around the world was Dave Kunst who started his walk traveling east from Waseca, Minnesota on 20 June 1970 and completed his journey on 5 October 1974, when he re-entered the town from the west. These feats are often tied to charitable fundraising and are undertaken, among others, by celebrities such as Sir Jimmy Savile and Ian Botham.
The term trail is also used by the authorities in some countries to mean any footpath that is not attached to a road or street. If such footpaths are in urban environments and are meant for both pedestrians and pedal cyclists, they can be called shared use paths or multi-use paths in general and official usage.
Some shopping streets are for pedestrians only. Some roads have special pedestrian crossings. A bridge solely for pedestrians is a footbridge.
In Britain, regardless of whether there is a footpath, pedestrians have the legal right to use most public roads, excluding motorways and some toll tunnels and bridges such as the Blackwall Tunnel and the Dartford Crossing — although sometimes it may endanger the pedestrian and other road users. The UK Highway Code advises that pedestrians should walk in the opposite direction to oncoming traffic on a road with no footpath.
Efforts are under way to restore pedestrian access to new developments, especially to counteract newer developments, 20% to 30% of which in the United States do not include footpaths. Some activists advocate large pedestrian zones where only pedestrians, or pedestrians and some non-motorised vehicles, are allowed. Many have extolled the virtues of pedestrian streets in urban areas. In the US, the proportion of households without a car is 8%, but a notable exception is New York City, the only locality in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (the figure is even higher in Manhattan, over 75%).
The use of cars for short journeys is officially discouraged in many parts of the world, and construction or separation of dedicated walking routes in city centres receives a high priority in many large cities in Western Europe, often in conjunction with public transport enhancements. In Copenhagen, the world's longest pedestrian shopping area, Strøget, has been developed over the last 40 years, principally due to the work of Danish architect Jan Gehl, a principle of urban design known as copenhagenisation.
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