What did walkability expert find in Pensacola? A marvelous canvas and a brutally ugly street.

Dan Burden's gaze immediately locked on a parking space just north of the intersection of Spring and Main streets.

With practiced efficiency he whipped out his tape measure, took a quick measurement and called out the result: 26 feet. The standard for angled parking is 17 feet, he noted.

The total width of Spring Street was a whopping 64 feet and many sections of the road were cross-hatched with paint indicating spots where people weren't meant to drive, park, bike or walk.

"You've got so much space that's squandered here," Burden noted.

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Burden, one of the nation's leading experts on walkability, visited Pensacola and shared his thoughts on the design of the city's streets during both a "walking audit" of downtown on Monday morning and on a CivicCon stage presentation Monday night at the Brownsville Community Center.

During the walking audit, he led about two dozen Pensacola citizens, community leaders and city staff around the loop of Spring, Garden, Palafox and Main streets pointing out the things that did and didn't work well for pedestrians and cyclists. He identified the bulk of Spring Street as ripe for redesign, noting that much of the 64 feet of asphalt could be reclaimed for things like a tree canopy, park benches and protected bike lanes.

"Everyone wins if we take back space that should have never been given to the motorist," he said.

Burden is known for his pioneering work championing livable, walkable communities where walking and biking are just as viable as driving — and are ideally preferable.

At 79, he's been working in the field for 50-odd years, conducted more than 5,000 walking audits, served 16 years as Florida's first state bicycle and pedestrian coordinator and 16 more advancing walkable communities through his organization, Walkable Communities. During the course of his career he's been lauded by the White House, Time magazine and Planetizen magazine as one of the most influential and innovative thinkers in the field.

Among his many contribution was the phrase "road diet," which he coined as a term for removing a lane from a street.

During his CivicCon presentation he showed off photos from many communities that had taken vast swaths of asphalt and applied road diets to make them narrower, safer and more appealing to not only foot traffic, but private investment such as new businesses and mixed-use housing developments.

He gave the example of a city called University Place in Washington, showing before and after photos of a street his team had helped the city reconfigure to be more walkable.

"It took years, but they were able to put together a beautiful new library, city hall, coffee shops and stores," Burden said. "A large restaurant went in, Whole Foods and right across the street, Trader Joe's. None of that would have happened had we not fixed the street first. That was critical."

Elaborating on the financial benefits of walkability, Burden referenced a study that calculated how much different modes of commuting cost or save society. The research shows the cost of driving is highly subsidized, with society paying $9.20 for every $1 a motorist pays back into the system. Conversely, society only pays 1 cent for every $1 a pedestrian pays into the system and 8 cents for every $1 a cyclist pays in.

Burden said if the Pensacola community could get rid of 15,000 cars — a number he said is realistic if we could build walkable neighborhoods where people could trade a car for a bicycle or possibly go without a second car — an extra $127 million a year would stay in the community.

"That's how much we're draining, sending our money elsewhere because of our car habit," Burden said.

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He also noted that now is great time to invest in walkability and active transportation projects because of the wealth of state and federal funding available.

"I've never lived at a time when money was more abundant, but we have to have people that know how to write grants, know which projects to go after, and to build great model projects," Burden said. "The good news is you've got a marvelous canvas and those projects that need to be written are out there. We walked a number of them on our walking audit."

Downtown Pensacola wasn't perfect in terms of use of space, planning of intersections and other factors, but Burden said Palafox Street was incredibly well done overall. Along the neighboring streets he pointed out many smaller wins such as little corners that had been reclaimed for green space and scooter rentals.

"You're already making the right kinds of changes," he said.

He also took some time to address the walkability of Brownsville, where the Florida Department of Transportation recently completed a large project to improve safety on West Cervantes Street. He noted there were some positives, such as slight curves in the road called "chicanes" intended to slow down traffic, lanes that had been narrowed to 9 and 10 feet respectively, and a "Z" crossing designed to increase pedestrian visibility.

"It didn't fully bring down speed but it addresses speed somewhat," he said, before adding, "but it's brutally ugly."

Burden suggested that West Cervantes Street would likely be a good candidate for a road diet — a sentiment many area residents and business owners agree with — and more broadly he suggested the community find other neighborhoods we care deeply about, improve them, then seek ways to connect them to each other.

Again using University Place as an example, he said it had been a difficult project that required many years and multiple different developers, but ultimately the road project had increased the area's tax revenues eightfold.

"So, any plan has to have its strategies of how it's going to help everyone at the same time, right? It's not just a need, it's a need that's going to be the next step that will bring in the income so now we can go off and work on two more neighborhoods, and then eventually four more neighbors," he said.

Burden's presentation was part of CivicCon, a nonprofit partnership with the Pensacola News Journal to make Pensacola a better place to live, grow work and invest.

The next CivicCon event will feature Joe Savage Jr., a recognized leader with over 15 years of experience in the fields of homelessness, social policy, economic development, and human services administration. His passion and experience have helped bring over $150 million of funding to support housing and services for the homeless and community development projects. Joe’s commitment to this work is rooted in his belief in the dignity of human life.

Savage will be discussing All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness. This ambitious and comprehensive strategic plan outlines how communities can prevent and reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025.

The event will be 6-7:30 p.m. May 9 at The REX Theatre in downtown Pensacola.

To register search "CivicCon" at eventbrite.com and to learn more about CivicCon and its past and upcoming speakers visit pnj.com/civiccon/.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola CivicCon has Dan Burden walking audit of downtown, Cervantes