Shared streets, which serve both slow-moving motor vehicles and pedestrians, can provide flexible, desirable public spaces. However, they provide a challenge for pedestrians with vision impairments. FHWA’s guide provides a toolbox of design options, as well as planning guidance and case studies, for addressing this issue.
Best Practices
Pedestrians First: Tools for a Walkable City (ITDP, 2018)
The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy recently released Pedestrians First: Tools for a Walkable City. The toolkit, aimed at governments, city planners, NGOs, and developers, notes that “Walkability is the foundation of any type of transportation; all trips require walking at some point.” The toolkit notes factors that influence walkability throughout the city and three scales: citywide, neighborhood, and street level.
A Bid for Better Transit (Transit Center and Eno Center for Transportation, 2017)
This report examines how governments can use contracting to improve their service for riders and take advantage of new technologies. However, they also caution that there are important considerations to safeguard the public interest and get the most from public-private transit partnerships.
A Bid for Better Transit (Transit Center and Eno Center for Transportation, 2017)
This report examines how governments can use contracting to improve their service for riders and take advantage of new technologies. However, they also caution that there are important considerations to safeguard the public interest and get the most from public-private transit partnerships.
Connecting Sacramento
Connecting Sacramento is the first study to incorporate both accessibility analysis and tripmaking data, including data from multiple sources, and assess how they can be used together to guide transportation- and land use-related decisions. This study focused specifically on opportunities to improve first- and last-mile connections to light rail transit in Sacramento, but its findings are widely applicable.
Accessibility in practice (SSTI and Virginia Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, 2017)
Planning agencies and transportation decision makers often talk about the importance of improving access to destinations, but they rarely have the tools or resources to measure accessibility and incorporate those metrics into decision making. This report guides agencies through that process.
Renewable Energy in the Right of Way
At SSTI’s first Sustainability Directors Community of Practice meeting in June 2015, attendees discussed their states’ interest in siting solar and other renewable energy generation facilities in the highway right-of-way but cited uncertainty regarding FHWA rules and unfamiliarity with the business side of renewable energy production as major hurdles. In an effort to support these efforts and allow interested states to learn from others, SSTI has gathered the technical documents gathered here, under the headings below, comprise a living repository for state DOTs and others to use as examples as they develop their own ROW renewable energy projects.
Advancing Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety: A Primer for Highway Safety Professionals (NHTSA, 2016)
As communities strive to encourage biking and walking, planners and engineers are focusing on designs and programs that improve safety for these users.This primer summarizes the most promising infrastructure treatments and behavioral programs available for addressing specific safety problems and highlights how these approaches can be combined and implemented.
Trip-making data, TDM, and connectivity in Northern Virginia (SSTI and Michael Baker International, 2016)
Commercially available GPS data offers valuable new insight about trip origins, destinations, and routes, including short trips that travel demand models often cannot capture. Using this data, SSTI worked with Michael Baker International, the Virginia DOT, and local stakeholders to identify opportunities for managing travel demand and improving connectivity throughout Northern Virginia. This final report describes the full data set and 17 selected case studies, along with recommended projects and policies, estimated costs, and benefits for each.
The Business Case for Investment in Public Transportation (APTA, 2016)
While transit has principally been considered the realm of the public-sector, new technologies, service providers, and investment models are building the case for private investment in public transportation. The American Public Transportation Association presents a new report that shows the various ways that private investment is becoming more common in public transportation.