Illinois releases its first comprehensive statewide bicycle plan

In April, the Illinois DOT released its first statewide bike plan, marking an important milestone both in ramping up its comprehensive planning efforts and in becoming a more multimodal transportation agency. The bike plan was released as a supplemental chapter to the state’s long-range plan. Both documents provide guidance for the agency in achieving its newly adopted strategic vision, which calls for “all modes [to] be integrated, coordinated, planned, and built with the idea that present and future travel options are user focused, economically supportive, ecologically sensitive, and information centric.”

Virginia DOT aims to assess its core assumptions and reprioritize

Last month, Virginia’s Deputy Secretary of Transportation, Nick Donohue, updated the Commonwealth Transportation Board, which oversees VDOT, on the status of the agency’s long-term planning process. He indicated to the board that the agency is beginning to rethink its core assumptions about future travel needs, and that the state’s next surface transportation plan will reflect this new way of thinking in important ways. Among the issues facing VDOT, Donohue noted, was the fact that recent increases in VMT have been far lower than the state’s forecasts suggest—a nationwide phenomenon that affects funding outlooks and programming decisions.

Linking Community Visioning and Highway Capacity Planning (Strategic Highway Research Program, 2012)

This report is intended to help transportation agency practitioners assess the possibilities of community visioning efforts, identify practical steps and activities when engaging in visioning, and establish links between vision outcomes and transportation planning and …