Chapter Two: Creating Your Community Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan

Step 1: Evaluate Existing Conditions

The best plans are developed when pre-plan conditions are understood and taken into consideration. The time and energy expended in initial research and public involvement will prevent expensive delays and produce a widely accepted plan. Bicycle and pedestrian planning does not occur in a vacuum and is often severely constrained by community conditions. At the same time, there may be many opportunities to understand the surrounding environment by studying the demographics and infrastructure of the community. Land use and transportation patterns, the demographics and trip patterns associated with bicycling and walking, traffic accident data, and the planning activities and facilities of adjacent communities influence a community's final plan.

Existing Information

Local, regional, and state transportation plans provide information about existing land use and transportation conditions. This information helps community planners to assess areas needing improvement. It is important to consider the following elements when developing a Bicycle and Pedestrian plan:

• Roadway Infrastructure:
  • interconnected grid or sub-division pattern
  • traffic counts
  • pavements and lane widths
  • travel speeds on area roadways
  • location of traffic signals
  • location of existing bikeways
• Land Use:
  • distance to shopping, housing and schools
  • mixed or separated use patterns
  • location of sidewalks; what policies relate to their installation
  • presence of barriers and obstacles, such as major highways, rivers, railroad yards, factories and warehouses
  • presence of railroad rights-of-way and rivers that could be developed as trails

   

New Information

Additional studies can be conducted to better understand the land use and transportation environment. These studies can include:

• Traffic Studies: Speed studies, traffic counts, bicycle and pedestrian counts, and roadway measurements must sometimes be conducted to determine candidate locations for improvements.
• Walking Audit: A subjective assessment of sidewalks and general pedestrian conditions conducted by such individuals as local officials, planners, interested adults and children. (See Appendix 4 for sample audit form.)
• Sidewalk Inventories: Map existing sidewalks. Note the condition of walkways, important destinations and gaps in the system.
• Bikability Checklist: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is developing a bicycle audit to be used for the assessment of bicycle conditions. Even an informal bicycle ride through the community can aid planners as they assess biking conditions.
• Surveys: Additional insights about general conditions can be obtained by formal and informal surveys. For instance, in one community a brief questionnaire in the local paper asked residents to identify "difficult" intersections. Some of those identified became the focus of prototype pedestrian design alternatives.
  
  

Product/Action

Key to developing a successful plan is the identification of elements that support or discourage pedestrian and bicycle travel. Sometimes it becomes clear that destinations are not far apart, but the connecting roadway system is limited to a few heavily traveled arterials that accommodate neither bicycles nor pedestrians. Land use inventories and maps are useful for identifying potential destinations for bicycle travel and priority service areas for pedestrian improvements. Assessments of traffic patterns and the available street infrastructure can help to identify both problem areas and streets that accommodate bicyclists or pedestrians fairly well.

• Develop one or more maps that indicate:
  • potential destinations
  • existing bikeways
  • trail corridors
  • known pedestrian activity areas
  • signalized intersections
  • traffic data
  • problem and opportunity areas
• Write a description of the environment summarizing the primary strengths and opportunities as well as the problems and constraints in the existing conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Bicyclist Skill Levels

When planning for bicyclists and pedestrians, design considerations should meet the needs of a variety of age and skill levels. The Federal Highway Administration identifies three levels of cycling ability:

Group A: Advanced Bicyclists – These are experienced riders who can operate under most traffic conditions. They prefer to operate on the existing street and highway system.

Group B: Basic Bicyclists – These are casual or new adult and teenage riders who are less confident of their ability to operate in traffic without special provisions for bicycles. These riders prefer low-speed, low traffic volume streets or designated bicycle facilities.

Group C: Children – These are pre-teen riders whose roadway use is monitored by parents. Eventually they are accorded independent access to the system. They and their parents prefer residential streets with low motor vehicle speed limits and volumes, sidewalks, and trails.

Local bicycle planning and design should, as much as possible, consider the needs of all three skill groups. However, Group B bicyclists will be the primary user of most bikeway networks.

Trip Patterns

Next to auto travel, walking is America's most favored travel mode, surpassing bus, rail, taxi and bicycle choices by a 4-to-1 ratio. In large cities (+ 1 million) that have rail systems, walking represents more than 13 percent of all person trips, as opposed to 7 percent nationwide.

Bicycle travel represents only 1 percent of all trips and the 1990 U.S. Census found that only 0.4 percent of work trips are made by bicycle. In communities with superior accommodations for bicyclists, the percentage is much higher. For instance, biking to work is 25 percent in Davis, California and 11 percent in Madison, Wisconsin.

The National Bicycling and Walking Study concludes that, "...if bicycling facilities are designed to allay safety concerns and are linked in such a way that access matches the access motorists have come to expect, then utilitarian bicycling will increase."

The National Bicycling and Walking Study states that there are three primary factors that correlate with high levels of bicycle commuting:

• Relatively short work trip distances
• Relatively high ratio of bike lanes to arterials
• Presence of a university

The most common factors that deter bicycling include:

• Concern about traffic safety
• Adverse weather
• Poor roadway conditions
• Trip distances

Factors that encourage bicycling include:

• Safe bicycle lanes
• Financial incentives
• Shower and storage facilities
• Rise in gas prices

Walking trips are correlated with similar factors. Additionally, studies have shown that those who do not have regular access to a car walk more. As a group, non-drivers include school-age children and the elderly, college-age students, and those who cannot afford or choose not to own a car.

The Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) finds a correlation between bicycling and walking and younger age groups as indicated by Table 1.

Bicycle and Walking Trip Purpose

In most studies, bicycling is found to be primarily a recreational activity. Surveys find that between 55 percent and 96 percent of respondents describe the purpose of their bicycling as recreational. However, many people (from 7 percent to 65 percent in various surveys), say that they also use bicycles for work/school/utility trips. The 1995 NPTS summarizes bicycle and walking trip purposes as shown in Table 2.

Trip Purpose on Trails

It is commonly assumed that trails are used mostly for recreational purposes. A study of suburban trails in northeastern Illinois revealed some surprising results. Sixty-six percent of bicyclists and 54 percent of pedestrians were using the trails for other than recreational purposes. Twenty-five percent of the respondents indicated that they had chosen to use the trail instead of driving to their destination.

Product/Action

Information on the demographics and trip making patterns associated with bicycling and walking can help planners develop realistic goals. For instance, college towns have a higher potential level of bicycle use. Communities with public transit might have higher levels of walking.

MPOs and RPAs can assist local governments with access to Census Travel to Work data for percentages of walking and bicycling trips to work in the region. They can also provide average work trip length data. This data can offer some insight into local patterns. However, Census data is not a definitive measure of non-motorized trip making. Work travel accounts for only 20 percent of all trips and just 9 percent of bicycling and walking trips and Census data applies only to trips taken in late March. Some regional agencies might have produced additional travel studies that would offer insights into local travel patterns.

• If data is available, produce a summary of local travel patterns including any available information about bicycle and pedestrian trip making and average trip length for all modes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is sponsoring research to refine development of bicycle/pedestrian crash analysis software for use by focal governments Contact: Marv Levy, NGTSA, mlevy@nhtsa.dot.gov.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, (NHTSA) maintains detailed statistics on traffic deaths and injuries. A pedestrian or bicyclist is killed or injured by a motor vehicle every 4 minutes. Pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities have decreased between 1987 and 1997, by 21 percent (pedestrians); and 14 percent (bicyclists), respectively. National statistics and trends offer insight into general patterns and offer a point of comparison for local information.

Trends would indicate walking and bicycling are getting safer. It is also possible that people are walking and bicycling less. To the extent that national trip data captures non-motorized travel, it appears that bicycling is increasing somewhat and walking is decreasing.

Although children seem to be bicycling and walking less, they remain vulnerable to death and injury in traffic: Bicyclists under age 16 accounted for 31 percent of fatalities and 43 percent of injuries in traffic crashes. More than one-fourth of children who were killed in traffic accidents were pedestrian.

The good news is that there is a general downward trend in traffic fatalities and this trend seems to be applying to pedestrians and bicyclists as well as motorists. The bad news is that certain people, especially children, might be walking and bicycling less than they once did, and this might be partly due to significant injuries and deaths associated with these activities.

Additional insight from national bicycle and pedestrian crash analysis include the facts that:

• Most bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities occurred in urban areas, at non-intersection locations, and in the evening and night time hours.

• Males greatly outnumber females as bicyclist (76 percent) and pedestrian (68 percent) fatalities.

• Alcohol involvement – either for the driver or the victim – was reported in one-third of the traffic crashes that resulted in bicyclist fatalities and in 45 percent of the pedestrian fatalities.

The primary factors causing bicycle fatalities are: – Failure to yield right-of-way: 21.2% – Riding, working, playing, etc. in roadway: 17.3% – Improper crossing of roadway or intersection: 15.1% – No factor reported: 27.9% The primary factors causing pedestrian fatalities are: – Walking, working, playing in the roadway: 30.5% – Improper crossing of roadway or intersection: 30.5% – Darting or running into the roadway: 14.7% – Failure to yield right-of-way: 13.0% – No factor reported: 23.3%

Product/Action

National data can serve as a point of comparison as communities look at their own crashes. Not enough is known about non-motorized trip making to draw definitive conclusions about declines or increases in actual crash rates in relationship to exposure. However, it is possible to do at least three exercises to determine the relative severity of the problem on the local level.

• Plot all known bicycle/pedestrian crashes on a map; note locations and check for clustering of accidents at particular locations or types of location.

• Determine a rate of bicycle and pedestrian crashes in relationship to population; compare this rate with the national and state rate.

• Examine police reports and record accidents according to the categories established by the FHWA to see if patterns of accident type emerge.

  Area Attractions and Planning Efforts

  As communities begin their planning process, it is important to consider destinations and attractions beyond local borders. Some reasons for such considerations can be:

• A community may want to connect with an existing or potential state, regional or adjacent community trail, sidewalk or bikeway system.

• A state park, or some other important destination, might be within biking distance from town.

Product/Action

Connecting to these other amenities will be important to local residents and require a planning effort that reaches beyond the local jurisdiction.

• Map nearby trails and attractions.
• Note points of connection to neighboring pedestrian and bicycle facilities.
• Document any agreements between communities that might impact local planning efforts.