Bike and Pedestrian Projects

Proven Safety Countermeasures in Rural Communities (FHWA, 2024)

The guide highlights a subset of the PSCs, with direct application in rural areas, including considerations, crash reduction effectiveness, case studies, and other resources. The guide also features a Desktop Reference table of PSCs that may be considered in rural communities and compares Safe System Roadway design hierarchy alignment, relative cost, unpaved road applicability, relative crash reduction, and typical service life.

Main Street, California: A Guide for People-Centered State Highway Main Streets (Caltrans, 2024)

This fourth edition of “Main Street” makes the topics of complete streets, livability, equity and sustainability accessible to a layperson, while providing the links and resources for a technical audience. The document highlights strategies and solutions for State Highways that are functioning as community main streets through photo examples and resources that can support collaboration, creative problem-solving, and a shared vision among internal staff, partners, and community members. Main Street is particularly useful for public and partner engagement efforts and it is an allied effort to the Design Information Bulletin (DIB) 94 and the newly released Caltrans Traffic Calming Guide.

Traffic Calming Guide: A Compendium of Strategies (Caltrans, 2024)

The Traffic Calming Guide aims to build self-enforcing roadways that guide road users to travel at a safe speed, especially through conflict points. It provides guidance to those who implement traffic calming strategies to help achieve goals set forth by communities and agencies.

Bike Audit Tool Kit (AARP, 2023)

Created by AARP Livable Communities with the League of American Bicyclists, the AARP Bike Audit Tool Kit is a free, 32-page, information- and image-filled guide that can be used by cycling advocates and local leaders to assess and improve the safety and accessibility of a community’s streets and paths for all users, including cyclists.

Countermeasures That Work: A Highway Safety Countermeasure Guide For State Highway Safety Offices Eleventh Edition (NHTSA, 2023)

Countermeasures That Work is intended to be a reference guide for State Highway Safety Offices to help select effective, science-based traffic safety countermeasures to address highway safety problem areas in their States.

Low-Cost Pedestrian Safety Zones: An Eight-Step Handbook (NHTSA, 2023)

Intended for transportation professionals, this handbook outlines the process of developing and using low-cost zones and explains how this approach can be used as part of a system safety plan to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of pedestrian safety programs.

Setting Speed Limits for Health and Safety (League of American Bicyclists, 2023)

This mini-report on setting speed limits shows the current framework for speed limit policies through a review of state laws that set speed limits. It is designed to help inform conversations on how lowering speed limits can help save lives and encourage physically active modes of transportation, such as walking and biking. Readers can use the information provided to identify opportunities that may exist to lower speed limits to ones that are safer for all roadway users.

A Trauma-Informed Approach to Active Transportation (CDPH, 2023)

“A Trauma-Informed Approach to Active Transportation: Recognizing the Relationship between Adversity, Resiliency, and Active Transportation” is a resource developed to support the efforts of active transportation safety partners and stakeholders as they work to educate decisionmakers about where opportunities exist to adopt and implement trauma-informed practices and approaches.

Safe System Strategies for Bicyclists and Pedestrians Toolkit

The Toolkit provides a starting point for anyone looking to plan a bikeable and walkable community. It lists potential community improvements that can help create a safer community with the Safe System Approach.

Guide to Pedestrian Analysis (NCHRP, 2022)

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 992: Guide to Pedestrian Analysis presents a state-of-the-art guide to conducting pedestrian traffic analysis on the basis of volume, safety, operations, and quality of service. In addition to the guide, the research provides new evaluation methods for use with the Highway Capacity Manual.

Low-Speed Zone Guide (WRI, 2021)

This Low-Speed Zone Guide presents strategies for planning, designing, building, and evaluating low-speed zones in cities. The guide intends to equip communities and decision-makers with the tools to implement low-speed zones that will suit their specific context.

Traffic Analysis and Intersection Considerations to Inform Bikeway Selection (FHWA, 2021)

This resource supplements the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Bikeway Selection Guide and is intended to inform mobility, safety, equity, and policy trade-off decisions associated with bikeway selection at intersections.

A Capital Region Guide to Community Quick-Builds for Complete Streets (CRCOG, 2020)

Curb extensions. Bus lanes. Pedestrian plazas. Protected bikeways. These are just a few of the projects communities large and small are implementing with the Quick-Build methodology. At a time of increased competition for funding transportation improvements, the low cost and iterative nature of Quick-Build projects are increasingly popular because they accelerate project delivery, provide a platform for experiential public engagement, and instigate a paradigm shift toward safer, more complete streets.

Go Human: Resilient Streets Toolkit (SCAG, 2020)

The Resilient Streets Toolkit is designed to build capacity for any jurisdiction to engage in a community-driven process to identify and implement street-level engagements. The toolkit offers insights that demonstrates viable and inclusive opportunities to reuse streets with resilient projects to help meet the social and environmental challenges of today, while building community capacity to engage in a more inclusive and holistic process so that resilience actions are guided by fundamental community values.

Quick-Build Guide: How to Build Safer Streets Quickly and Affordably (California Bicycle Coalition, 2020)

The California Bicycle Coalition (CalBike) and Alta Planning + Design are excited to share this Quick-Build Guide for quickly and inexpensively creating safe spaces on our streets for people to travel by bike, on foot, on a scooter, by skateboard, or by any other low-impact, low-cost mode of transportation. Making these options available right away is key to our equitable recovery from the economic collapse caused by the pandemic and our ongoing resilience in the face of climate change.

Walk and Bicycle Audit Guide (Walk Sacramento, 2020)

This toolkit is meant to guide participants through an assessment of walking and biking conditions in a community. Guiding questions prompt users to consider how street design and infrastructure conditions affect safety, comfort, and convenience for pedestrians and bicyclists. The toolkit focuses on five key elements of the built environment: pedestrian facilities, bicycle facilities, transit facilities, vehicle facilities, and land use. Space is provided at the end of the toolkit to include a map of the route for users to make additional notes as needed.

AARP The Pop-Up Placemaking Tool Kit (AARP, 2019)

This tool kit stems from Team Better Block’s on-the-ground experience and lessons learned, yet it is not a prescription for how a demonstration or change must be implemented. Community leaders, organizations and residents are encouraged to use this publication and Team Better Block’s pop-up recipe catalog (see page 23) as a starting point.

Bikeway Selection Guide (FHWA, 2019)

This document is a resource to help transportation practitioners consider and make informed trade-off decisions relating to the selection of bikeway types. It is intended to supplement planning and engineering judgment. It incorporates and builds upon the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) support for design flexibility to assist transportation agencies in the development of connected, safe, and comfortable bicycle networks that meet the needs of people of all ages and abilities.

Getting to the Curb (SF Vision Zero Coalition, 2019)

Every city has different engineering practices, and every street has different characteristics and needs. Therefore, this guide doesn’t offer strict design guidelines, but rather larger considerations and specific design features that solve some of the challenges that cycle tracks pose for pedestrians.

How to Do a Parking Study (MAPC, 2019)

Any discussion of parking needs should begin with a survey of existing use. Many simple counts can be accomplished by community staff or local volunteers with minimal training. The guidance below is intended primarily for community staff and local volunteers in designing a survey and collecting parking data.

Pedestrian Safety Countermeasures Toolbox (Caltrans, 2019)

This document provides a set of tools for improving pedestrian safety on the State Highway System. It was designed to be used to address issues identified during traffic safety investigations conducted while evaluating high collision concentration locations and systemic safety locations. However, these tools may be used more generally to improve pedestrian safety.

Bikeway Classification (Caltrans, 2017)

This guide clarifies the different types of bikeways that can be implemented for bicyclists in cities.

Small Town and Rural Multimodal Networks (FHWA, 2016)

This document is intended to be a resource for transportation practitioners in small towns and rural communities. It applies existing national design guidelines in a rural setting and highlights small town and rural case studies. It addresses challenges specific to rural areas, recognizes how many rural roadways are operating today, and focuses on opportunities to make incremental improvements despite the geographic, fiscal, and other challenges that many rural communities face.

Walk Audit Tool Kit (AARP, 2016)

The AARP Walk Audit Tool Kit Leader Guide builds upon the AARP Walk Audit Tool Kit, a step-by-step self-service guide for assessing a community’s walkability. This guide helps a community leader or group conduct a larger-scale walkability event consisting of a workshop and an on-the-ground walk audit in which teams of volunteers observe and document the use and safety of local streets.

Urban Bikeway Design Guide (NACTO, 2014)

The purpose of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide (part of the Cities for Cycling initiative) is to provide cities with state-of-the-practice solutions that can help create complete streets that are safe and enjoyable for bicyclists.

Conducting Bicycle and Pedestrian Counts (SCAG, 2013)

This manual presents a bicycle count protocol for the Southern California region that provides consistency and direction for bicycle and pedestrian counts as well as guidance for choosing count technologies. Currently, the differing time periods, choice of methodology, and other variables make it difficult to compare existing count data sets. This manual is intended to establish a standardized bicycle count methodology across the SCAG region so that counts are reliable and comparable across jurisdictions.

Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities 4th Edition (AASHTO, 2012)

Local, state, and federal agencies are responding to the increased use of bicycles by implementing a wide variety of bicycle-related projects and programs. This interest in bicycle transportation calls for an understanding of bicycles, bicyclists, and bicycle facilities. This guide addresses these issues and clarifies the elements needed to make bicycling a more safe, comfortable, and convenient mode of transportation.

Tactical Urbanism Volume 2 (The Street Plans Collaborative/Next Gen, 2012)

In 2012, The Street Plans Collaborative and the CNU NextGen: The Next Generation of New Urbanists responded to growing demand and released the second volume of the Tactical Urbanism open-source guide. This volume takes insight from the authors as well as from over 150 people who attended the first Tactical Urbanism Salon in 2011. Volume 2 is more than an update of the first and includes a discussion of the rise of Tactical Urbanism and the spectrum of interventions. It also covers 12 additional short-term actions inspiring long-term change.

Guide for the Preparation of Traffic Impact Studies (Caltrans, 2002)

Caltrans desires to provide a safe and efficient State transportation system for the citizens of California pursuant to various Sections of the California Streets and Highway Code. This is done in partnership with local and regional agencies through procedures established by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other land use planning processes. The intent of this guide is to provide a starting point and a consistent basis in which Caltrans evaluates traffic impacts to State highway facilities. The applicability of this guide for local streets and roads (non-State highways) is at the discretion of the effected jurisdiction.

Community Walkability Checklist (SCAG)

Everyone benefits from walking. These benefits include: improved fitness, cleaner air, reduced risks of certain health problems, and a greater sense of community. But walking needs to be safe and easy. Take a walk and use this checklist to decide if your neighborhood is a friendly place to walk.

Community Bikeability Checklist (SCAG)

Some communities are more bikeable than others: how does yours rate? Read over the questions in this checklist and then take a ride in your community, perhaps to the local shops, to visit a friend, or even to work. See if you can get where you want to go by bicycle, even if you are just riding around the neighborhood to get some exercise.

AARP Walking Group Toolkit (AARP)

The Walking Group Tool Kit is designed to provide individuals, organizations and community groups easy ideas on how to start a walking group.