Growing out of the guide book, “Steps to a Walkable Community,” which we wrote about in a previous post, America Walks and Sam Schwartz Engineering have created a new website, www.walksteps.org.  The website is an “online resource for developing strategies toward walkable communities,” with tactics and case studies that communities can use to help them in their efforts to become more walk-friendly.  The website allows users to create and share specific tactics in a “My Tactics” page.  The tactics are organized under the following six categories:

• Advocacy
• Policy
• Land Use
• Design and Engineering
• Encouragement and Education
• Enforcement

The National Complete Streets Coalition (NCSC) has released three new presentations that are available for individuals and communities to use and/or adapt to help inform and educate others about complete streets.  The first, “Introduction to Complete Streets,” covers the basics on why Complete Streets are needed.  "The Many Benefits of Complete Streets" addresses the value that a Complete Streets approach can add to your community.  Lastly, "Complete Streets: Changing Policy" outlines and describes the basic elements of an ideal Complete Streets policy. Each presentation includes citations and presenter notes.  In addition, see NCSC’s factsheets covering various topics that are related to and can potentially be addressed through complete streets.

The League of American Bicyclists (LAB) has created summaries, accessible via an interactive map, of each state’s laws that directly affect bicyclists.  In addition, LAB is working to create model legislation for use and adaptation by communities to improve bicyclists' safety and comfort.   LAB recently completed the first of these model ordinances, a Vulnerable Road User law.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) has published a white paper that examines automated enforcement systems in order to assess their potential for improving bicyclist and pedestrian safety.  The paper argues that automated enforcement systems should be seen as one potential tool to aid crash prevention, rather than a comprehensive and final solution.  The author concludes that, to be effective, such systems should be implemented alongside education and engineering improvements, as well as other enforcement activities.

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has released a report  on a new method to estimate pedestrian and bicyclist exposure in large urban areas.  By calculating the average, estimated annual number of linear miles of roadway (or other motor vehicle shared facility) traveled by pedestrians and bicyclists in a given city, researchers can calculate a crash risk estimate defined as x number of crashes per 100 million miles of shared roadway travelled by pedestrians or bicyclists.

The report describes the application of this methodology to various shared facility types characteristic of the urban environment in Washington, D.C. These facilities included three types of intersections (signalized, four-way stop-controlled, and partially stop-controlled), midblock road segments, driveways, alleys, parking lots, parking garages, school areas, and areas with playing, dashing, or working in the roadway.

A new report by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute discusses reasons to implement complete streets and how the complete streets approach to roadway design relates to other planning innovations.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, in partnership with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has published a white paper that develops a framework for metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to use to integrate health into the metropolitan area transportation planning. The framework addresses both how MPOs can approach health as a general, broad-based goal in comprehensive and interdisciplinary planning and also how MPOs can consider health during all stages of the metropolitan transportation planning process.

The report explores how health can effectively be incorporated in metropolitan transportation planning through case studies of the following four regional agencies:

• Nashville Area MPO
• Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC)
• Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG)
• San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG)

The Village of Wheeling Board has adopted the Wheeling Active Transportation Plan, and is moving forward with discussions on how to implement the plan’s recommendations. The plan was developed by the Village with assistance from the Active Transportation Alliance and TranSystems, a transportation design and engineering firm.  The plan was funded through the CMAP’s Local Technical Assistance (LTA) program.

As required by the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that hybrid and electric vehicles meet minimum sound standards in order to help make pedestrians more aware of the approaching vehicles.  The public will have 60 days to submit comments on the proposed rule. 

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) has released applications for the Illinois Bicycle Path Grant Program, the federal Recreational Trails Program (RTP), and the Illinois Off-Highway Vehicle Program.  More information and important dates can be found on the IDNR’s Bicycle Path webpage.  Application deadline for all programs is noon on March 1, 2013.

The State of Illinois and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) have issued a press release announcing the projects awarded funding under the 2012 Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program (ITEP).

The 2012 program totals nearly $50 million, nearly half of which will go to projects in northeastern Illinois.  IDOT received 328 applications requesting total federal funds of nearly $327 million.  Beginning this year, IDOT will administer the ITEP program to be awarded annually instead of every two years.

In acknowledgment of the growing importance of cycling as a means of transportation and of the value of bikeability for communities, Walk Score has launched a version of Bike Score, which seeks to measure the bike-friendliness of a city. 

Bike Score calculates a 0-100 rating of the bikeability of a location based on four equally weighted components:

• Bike lanes
• Hills
• Destinations and road connectivity
• Bike commuting mode share

The Bike Score for a city is then calculated by applying the Bike Score algorithm block-by-block throughout the city and weighting the scores by population density.   The result is a “heat map” for the city indicating relative bikeability.  Currently, Bike Score rates only ten U.S. cities: Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Madison, Washington D.C., Seattle, Tucson, New York, and Chicago.

Bike Score was developed in collaboration with faculty at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia under a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) has  published a white paper that examines the use of Health Impact Assessments (HIA) to evaluate bicycle and pedestrian plans.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, in collaboration with Toole Design Group and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), have completed a study of current bike sharing programs in the United States. The study, Bike Sharing in The United States: State of the Practice and Guide to Implementation, explores the evolution of bike sharing in the U.S.  The report identifies success factors, surveys different funding models, examines demographic and geographic trends affecting implementation of programs, gives a step-by-step approach for developing a start-up program, and discusses ways to increase demand in and to expand existing programs.

A new report from the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California - Berkeley utilizes a case study approach of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail stations to examine factors that may have contributed both to increases in the number of bicycle trips to access rail stations and also to the enlargement of bike access‐sheds over time.  The authors document on‐site factors, such as an increase in the number of protected and convenient bicycle parking racks, as well as off‐site factors, such as increases in nearby bikeway facilities, to help explain the growing use of bicycles for accessing rail stations.  The adage “build it and they will come,” the study argues, holds for bicycle improvements as much as other forms of urban transportation infrastructure.  Pro‐active partnerships between various entities, including transit agencies, local government, transportation agencies, and bicycle advocacy organizations, are critical to ensuring such improvements are made.

While roundabouts have been shown, in certain situations, to reduce fatal and severe injury crashes when compared to traditional signalized intersections, their impact on pedestrian safety is not fully understood.  This report from Minnesota Department of Transportation and the University of Minnesota investigates pedestrian travel and safety using observations of the interactions between pedestrians and bicyclists and motor vehicles at two modern urban roundabouts in Minnesota.   The report also calculated pedestrian delay at the roundabouts as pedestrians waited either for gaps in traffic or for motor vehicle drivers to yield.

The Ohio Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) Office of Research and Development, in partnership with Ohio Safe Routes to School and the Federal Highway Administration, has published “Developing a Methodology for School Travel Plan Development for Large School Districts.”  The report outlines a process to allow large school districts (defined by ODOT as those with more than 15 kindergarten through 8th grade schools) to develop comprehensive, district-wide School Travel Plans (STP).

In order to develop this process, a pilot district (Cincinnati Public Schools) was chosen in order to test and refine methodologies. Methodologies were developed around three key areas identified by ODOT: mapping, infrastructure project identification and prioritization, and non-infrastructure project identification and prioritization.

The report includes “Lessons Learned” and “Recommendations” that may be generalized to assist other large school districts to develop STPs that incorporate both infrastructure and non-infrastructure items.

The New York City Department of Transportation has released a report that proposes new metrics for measuring the overall success of streets, discusses key approaches to street design projects and how these approaches can meet safety goals, serve all users, create great public spaces, and maintain traffic flow.

An article in the journal “Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice” describes a research project undertaken by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC) to better understand bicyclists’ preferences for routes and facility types in Portland.  GPS units were used to record 1,449 non-exercise, utilitarian trips of 164 cyclists over several days. These trips were then coded to the City of Portland’s detailed bicycle network.  Trip purpose and other trip-level variables were recorded by the cyclists.

Analysis of the results suggests that cyclists’ route choices are sensitive to distance, turn frequency, slope, the presence or absence of intersection control, and traffic volumes. Cyclists also appear to value off-street bike paths, enhanced neighborhood bikeways with traffic calming features (aka “bicycle boulevards”), and bicycle-friendly bridge facilities.  Standard bike lanes offset the negative effects of adjacent traffic, but were not more or less attractive than a basic, low-volume street.

The Association for Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) has announced their monthly webinar series for 2013.  Generally, a webinar site license costs $85 ($50 for APBP members).   Member discounts for five or more webinars are available.   For more information and to register, visit the APBP website.

• January 16 - Best Practices in Pedestrian Wayfinding
• February 20 - Driving Deaths Down: Proven Countermeasures that Work
• March 20 - Dynamics of Effective Advisory Committees
• April 17 - Economic Benefits of Walkable and Bike Friendly Communities
• May 15 - Bike Signals
• June19 - What's in There for Me: Mining National Data for Information on Walking and Bicycling
• July 17 - From Paint to Preform: Getting the Most from Pavement Markings
• August 21 - Getting Better Data for Better Decisions: Improving Performance Measures and Outcomes
• September 18 - Integrating Spatial Data to Develop Community Priorities
• October 16 - Using Photo-enforcement to Improve Pedestrian Safety
• November 20 - Is There Safety in Numbers for Cyclists and Pedestrians?
• December 18 - Integrating Equity into Bicycle and Pedestrian Planning