Roads & Cars

This report presents a framework for conducting and documenting environmental management activities by corridor.

Potential for Conflict—When motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians compete for the same section of roadway,conflicts and collisions are bound to occur.Anyone who's walked or bicycled Southern California's streets and roads can cite instances of near misses with impatient or distracted drivers, perhaps cutting them off in crosswalks or bike lanes.

This report presents the results of the first phase of a two phase research project undertaken by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to study travel characteristics of infill development in California’s metropolitan areas.

These Urban Street Design Guidelines are intended to ensure that the best aspects of Charlotte's transportation network are re-cretaed as the city and its street network continue to evolve.

This presentation by Mark A. Cole of the Charlotte Department of Transportation lays out the necessity of implementing Complete Streets in Charlotte, as well as the goals of those initiatives.

This policy and technical document lays out a plan for context-sensitive complete streets in the City of Charlotte to improve the safety and neighborhood livability, promote transportation choices, and meet land use objectives consistent with the City's Urban Street Design Guidelines.

Studying transporation trends, the City of Boulder attempt to document a change in the use of modes in their city using gathered data and surveys.

The corridor analysis advocated by the Neighborhood Horizons Plan looked at redesign opportunities to create a
pedestrian and bicycle friendly community-oriented
commercial corridor in a safe, quiet neighborhood.

Presentation showing different roads across the country that have gone on road diets

This design guide provides information on constructing or modifying rural roads to cope with excessive speed and unsafe conditions.

This design guide provides information on creating narrow, streets in cities, villages, and hamlet centers with buildings close to sidewalks and other pedestrian-friendly features.

With communities across the country now recognizing the importance of "complete streets," what does implementation of a city or county's complete streets policy actually look like? While bike lanes and sidewalks are an important component of making a complete street, the underling design guidelines and policies for roadways and parking are equally influential in creating livable communities.

An analysis estimating the change in crashes before and after road diets were implemented.

The goals of this study were to examine the differences between pedestrian and bicycle crashes in urban and rural settings in North Carolina and to identify problem areas.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) strongly encourages the use of raised medians in curbed sections of multi-lane roadways in urban and suburban areas, particularly in areas where there are mixtures of a significant number of pedestrians, high volumes of traffic and intermediate or high travel speeds.

This TechBrief summarizes an evaluation of the effects on speed of low-cost, traffic-calming treatments on main rural highways passing through small, rural communities in Iowa.

This feature explains the complete streets movement and explores ways to make urban thoroughfares more pedestrian and bicycle friendly and respectful of the surrounding community while not unduly compromising motor vehicle travel. Techniques for designing an arterial street that an control traffic speeds and permit more comfortable and safe pedestrian and bicycle access are described.

Benefits of road diets for bicyclists and pedestrians?

• Provide space to add bicycle lanes
• Reduce crossing distance
• Eliminate or reduce "multiple threat" crash types
• Install crossing island to cross in 2 simple steps
• Reduce top end travel speeds
• Buffer sidewalk from travel lanes (parking or bike lane)
• Reclaim street space for "higher and better use" than moving peak hour traffic

This is a manual that describes how well-conceived traffic calming techniques and traditional neighborhood street design can accomodate the needs of emergency responders while creating safe and livable neighborhoods.

This fact sheet and other LGC materials suggest a more careful approach in which emergency responders participate with residents and local jurisdictions to develop programs that minimize impacts on response times.

This chapter provides an overview of landscape planning and design, an integral part of transportation project development.

This chapter describes a variety of measures that can be used to lower vehicle speeds, and redirect traffic flows.

Incomplete streets cost families money and encourage oil consumption—Transportation is the second largest expense for American households, costing more than food, clothing, and health care. Even prior to the recent run-up in gasoline prices, Americans spent an average of 18 cents of every dollar on transportation, with the poorest fifth of families spending more than double that figure. Much of this household transportation expense is pumped directly into the gas tank. The United States uses 20 million barrels of oil per day and over 40% of American oil consumption goes to passenger cars.

Complete Streets are designed and operated so they work for all users—pedestrians, bicyclists. Incomplete Streets Breed Congestion—Designing streets only for automobiles reduces opportunities for safe travel choices that can ease traffic congestion: walking, bicycling, and taking public transportation. Americans drove almost three trillion miles in 2008,1 and many of those trips were very short. Half of all trips in metropolitan areas are three miles or less and 28% are one mile or less. In rural areas, 30% of all trips are two miles or less, and yet a vast majority of these trips are by automobile.

Presentation provides a throrough introduction to complete streets

Communities across the country are realizing the 'green' potential of their streets. Making our transportation system more sustainable involves many policies and practices that minimize environmental impact and create streets that are safe for everyone, regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation. Complete streets are a natural complement to sustainability efforts, ensuring benefits for mobility, community, and the environment. Many elements of street design, construction, and operation can work in favor of achieving both complete streets that work for all travelers and 'green' streets that serve environmental sustainability. Complete Streets are designed and operated so they work for all users.

Presentation demonstrates what complete streets are and are not.

Communities across the country are realizing the ‘green’ potential of their streets. Making our transportation system more sustainable involves many policies and practices that minimize environmental impact and create streets that are safe for everyone, regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation. Complete streets are a natural complement to sustainability efforts, ensuring benefits for mobility, community, and the environment. Many elements of streetdesign, construction, and operation can work in favor of achieving both complete streets that work for all travelers and ‘green’ streets that serve environmental sustainability. Complete Streets are designed and operated so they work for all users.

Roadway Design Objectives should include: a roadway environment that the user can: Interpret correctly and safely, Minimize their mistakes, Minimize impact of their mistakes

A framework for thoroughfare design:

1. Define context
2. Specify a complete palette of thoroughfare types
3. Define correspondence between context and thoroughfare type
4. Bring network into the process

The objective of this research was to investigate whether a relationship exists between street network characteristics and the choice of transportation modes selected in a neighborhood. In this study, we controlled for factors such as street characteristics, vehicle volumes, activity levels, income levels, proximity to limited access highways and to the downtown area. The results suggest that all three of the fundamental characteristics of a street network — street connectivity, street network density, and street patterns — are statistically significant in affecting the choice to drive, walk, bike, or take transit.

The paper examines the role of the street network in road safety outcomes. Data on more than 130,000 crashes occurring over nine years in 24 medium-sized California cities was input into a geographic information system (GIS) and evaluated against principal measures of street network density and connectivity at the Census Block Group level. Few studies have taken this more comprehensive approach of looking at the complete street network when it comes to safety, partly because until now this kind of holistic assessment would have been very difficult without recent advances in research tools such as GIS.

This handbook recommends a process for development of street standards, provides important information to help communities consider and decide on the standards, and includes model designs as a starting point.

This study offers a method for analyzing the theory that the physical design of streets impacts safety.

This Citizen’s Guide is intended to show people who are passionate about creating better streets and walkable communities how they can influence highway professionals to address transportation in ways that place the most value on people and on places.

The case studies in this booklet offer a small sample of the ways in which highway projects can be designed with imagination, creativity, and collaboration to preserve and enhance the character and quality of a community without sacrificing transportation mobility and safety. While these few examples illustrate the art of the possible, throughout the country we see a new commitment to collaboration leading to more imaginatively designed facilities that enrich the communities in which they are located.

These chapters cover many of the basic elements that can help create good places and enhance community life, including traffic calming, an innovative approach to the design and management of streets that redistributes street space more equitably for all users and, in doing so, acts as a Placemaking catalyst.

The Concept Plan process has provided an opportunity for Carmichael residents, property owners and County departments to participate in creating a design concept for Fair Oaks Boulevard. The Concept Plan illustrates Draft General Plan and Carmichael Community Plan draft policies, addresses the creation of a special planning area (SPA), and compares roadway design options. Specifically, the concept plan illustrates ways in which the community's desires for Fair Oaks Boulevard can be meshed with the roadway project proposed by the County of Sacramento.

This report was developed to analyze the market demand for commercial services and assess the potential to develop and market higher density infill housing along the North Watt Corridor. This market study is incorporated into the existing conditions report, as the first phase of the revitalization plan. The market study will provide a framework for presenting realistic land use alternatives along the Corridor.

An ordinance providing for the continuation of a one-half of one percent retail transactions and use tax by the Sacramento Transportation Authority for local transportation purposes

As this report will show, there still is a long way to go to repair the damage done to communities in the past, even as we begin to shift policies and design philosophy to build streets that are safer for pedestrians and motorists alike. However, there are a growing number of excellent models to build on and thousands of communities eager to move forward.

Complete streets can improve population health indirectly — through increased walking, biking, and transit use, Increased physical activity, Less obesity and chronic disease, Reduced respiratory conditions, deaths, other conditions related to air pollution — and Directly — through Reduced traffic injuries and deaths, and increased social interaction.

1. Transportation Action Plan
2. USDG Philosophy and Approach
3. Applying the Six-Step Plan/Design Process

This research helps confirm what had been intuitively obvious: in the four metropolitan areas studied, transit-oriented development (TOD) housing produced considerably less traffic than what is generated by conventional development.

Connectivity (also called permeability) refers to the directness of links and the density of connections in path or road network. A well-connected road or path network has many short links, numerous intersections, and minimal dead-ends (cul-de-sacs).

As connectivity increases, travel distances decrease and route options increase, allowing more direct travel between destinations, creating a more Accessible and Resilient system.

This report investigates claims that highway capacity expansion is a cost effective and desirable solution to urban traffic congestion problems.

What rights do non-motorized modes have to use public roadways? Do nonmotorized modes receive a fair share of roadway resources? Do motorists really subsidize walking and cycling? This report explores these questions.