Bicycles/Pedestrians

Safety Toolbox: Planning

This section contains a description of the types of policies, codes, and standards jurisdictions can adopt to improve bicyclist or pedestrian safety or encourage pedestrian and bicycle travel. Policies set direction for jurisdictions and guide staff in the everyday decisions that impact bicyclists and pedestrians.

Sample policy documents include General Plans, Specific Plans, Redevelopment Plans and bicycle and pedestrian plans.

Codes are locally enacted ordinances that are intended to implement policies.  The zoning code, for example, defines permitted land uses, floor-to-area ratios and other regulations pertaining to the type and form of development.  It is normally generally consistent with the General Plan land use map.

Standards describe the types, dimensions and other design specifications of transportation improvements.  In addition to things like roadway cross-sections, standards cal also include guidelines for traffic control.

In this section:

• General plans
• Circulation Element of General Plans
• Bicycle and Pedestrian Plans
• Specific Plans
• Zoning and municipal codes
• Capital improvement plans
• Development review
• Design standards and guidelines

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General Plans

The commitment to creating a safe, bicycle and pedestrian-supportive environment should be reflected in a jurisdiction's General Plan. The General Plan is the highest policy document, and as such, it defines the community's vision and gives a roadmap of policy initiatives necessary to achieve the vision.

In order to be supportive of pedestrian and bicycle circulation, the Land Use Element of the General Plan should:

• Encourage compact, mixed-use development, including policies to create zoning and design guidelines for pedestrian- and bicycle-oriented development. Compact development minimizes the number of trips made by car as well as the length of trips made by non-motorized travel.  Both of these strategies reduce bicyclist and pedestrian exposure.
• Establish policies for site and building design that support bicyclist and pedestrian activity, regardless of land use densities and intensities. For instance, developers might be required to submit an internal pedestrian circulation plan or bicycle parking locations as part of their site designs.  An internal circulation plan should include well-marked and intuitive pedestrian connections to public rights-of-way such as sidewalks and pedestrian pathways between buildings, where applicable.  In addition to supporting a minimum level of bicycle and pedestrian improvements throughout the community, the General Plan can also identify specific zones and corridors, such as the downtown core or main street, where a particular focus would be put to create a pedestrian- and bicycle- supportive environment.

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Circulation Element of the General Plan

The Circulation Element of the General Plan should also aim to balance conditions for all road users. This may call for a change regarding the vehicular level of service policies governing the nature and extent of roadway improvements required of new development and maintenance of existing roadways. Some communities may be willing to accept degradations in vehicular level of service in specific areas in exchange for improved bicycle and pedestrian conditions.  This is an instance where the Land Use and Circulation Elements may work together.  By defining specific pedestrian or bicycle zones in the Land Use Element, the Circulation Element may establish different standards in these areas.  For instance, if the Central Business District is defined as a pedestrian and/or bicycle zone, a city may accept a vehicular Level of Service D or E in order to provide bicycle lanes, compact intersections, or leading pedestrian intervals, whereas in other parts of the city, vehicular Level of Service C is the standard.

Balancing all modes supports safety as well as economic vitality. The Circulation Element should also establish goals for investment in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and ensure that pedestrian and bicyclist accommodation is a part of all transportation investments.   The Funding section elaborates on creative strategies to increase funding for implementation.

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Bicycle and Pedestrian Plans

A Bicycle or Pedestrian Plan may stand-alone or be incorporated into the General Plan.  Some cities, such as Petaluma, have a Circulation Element composed almost entirely of individual plans while others, such as Santa Clara may have Bicycle or Pedestrian Plans that are separate from the General Plan, but guided by its policies.  These Plans include design guidelines, proposed networks, recommendations for education and enforcement strategies, and general policies for improving bicycle and pedestrian conditions on all streets.  While bicycle and pedestrian plans usually have a goal of reducing the number of collisions, they also aim to improve mobility and accessibility for these users.  Policies to improve safety and mobility often overlap.  However, while policies to improve safety usually improve mobility; policies to improve mobility do not necessarily improve safety. 

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Specific Plans

A Specific Plan establishes a link between policies of the General Plan and the specific characteristics and proposals in a defined area. A Specific Plan may create broad policy concepts, or it may provide direction to every facet of development from the type, location and intensity of uses to the design and capacity of infrastructure.

The Specific Plan establishes a policy directive and develops special project specific site, building, parking, and open space design guidelines and standards that create a pedestrian- and bicycle-supportive environment. The Circulation chapter should illustrate pedestrian-and bicycle-supportive streetscape design concepts. The circulation plan for bicycles and pedestrians should create the safest, most efficient on- and off-roadway routes.  Tools in the circulation chapter might include frequent or enhanced crossing opportunities, traffic calming elements, and way-finding signage.  For instance, the Plan may establish barriers for vehicles such as cul-de-sacs or street closures, while maintaining right-of-way for bicyclists and pedestrians. 

The Specific Plan's implementation program should define the shared public and private investment in the multi-modal circulation network, from building new infrastructure to providing street improvements to existing infrastructure.

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Zoning and municipal codes

For municipalities that are unable to undertake a complete zoning update to modify street standards in designated cores or along corridors, an alternative is to develop a Pedestrian, Bicycle, or Transit Overlay Zoning Ordinance as has been done in the California cities of San Jose and Mountain View. New zoning might mandate design requirements such as reduced lot sizes and setbacks in order to shrink block sizes; provide more frequent crossing opportunities; and provide more direct connections to destinations for cyclists and pedestrians.

City ordinance updates to the Municipal Code can establish separate fee structures for bicyclist infractions; increase fines for crosswalk encroachment; and guide law enforcement officers in dealing with innovations such as pedestrians carrying flags.  The Municipal Code may also contain a Bicycle Parking Ordinance, which requires all new development to have secure, convenient bicycle parking.

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Capital improvement plans

Capital improvements to enhance pedestrian and bicyclist safety should be included in capital improvement plans. Existing guidelines or criteria for prioritizing capital improvements may require modification to enable these types of projects to score well. An alternative is to develop capital improvement plans exclusively for pedestrian and bicyclist safety and accessibility. Example of how to incorporate pedestrian projects into capital improvement plans: Sacramento Pedestrian Master Plan (PDF).

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Development review

The evaluation of pedestrian and bicycle impacts should be integrated into traffic impact analysis guidelines and plan review checklists. Requirements could include:

• An inventory of existing accommodations;
• Evaluation of existing and future levels of service;
• Calculating visibility triangles for pedestrians at corners;
• Site circulation plans for pedestrians, including site circulation to and from sidewalks to parking facilities;
• Measurable significance criteria with respect to access or impacts to existing facilities; and,
• Adherence to existing plans and design guidelines.

Impacts may be considered significant if:

• A project disrupts existing pedestrian or bicycle facilities, especially at project-proposed driveways; or
• A project interferes with planned pedestrian or bicycle facilities, including failure to dedicate right-of-way for planned sidewalks or on- or off-street bicycle facilities included in an adopted master plans; or
• A project conflicts or creates inconsistencies with adopted pedestrian or bicycle system plans, guidelines, policies, or standards.

 

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Design standards and guidelines

A community may wish to create a set of standards and guidelines that would be a community's "checklist for walkability and bikeability," and the document to which all other planning documents refer. The intention of the guidelines and standards document would be to improve pedestrian and bicyclist access and safety by providing a resource to those responsible for the conditions of the built environment.

The standards and guidelines document addresses issues of new development as well as the retrofit and improvement of areas that are already developed in the community. For instance, the document might establish design guidelines for new neighborhoods requiring short block lengths with controlled intersections at least every 500 feet in order to slow vehicle speeds.

Design Guidelines might also establish street standards based on adjacent land use instead of vehicle volume.  This approach allows cities to be more flexible and to provide a higher degree of protection for both bicyclists and pedestrians in areas where they are more likely to travel.  Street standards create the balance among all road users in a given area.  Volume or vehicle-driven standards shift the balance to autos on all streets, whereas land use-driven standards allow city staff to shift the balance to pedestrians or bicyclists by allocating more roadspace to these users in particular areas.  For instance, an arterial street in an industrial area might have a four-foot planting strip next to the sidewalk; no on-street parking; and narrow bicycle lanes because pedestrian and bicycle volumes are expected to be lower in this area.  However, in a commercial district, the planting strip might be increased to six feet with on-street parking and six- to seven-foot bicycle lanes.

Analysis of bicyclist and pedestrian collision trends may help to guide the development of street standards.  For instance, California collision statistics indicate that a majority of bicyclist collisions occur between 4:00p.m. and 8:00p.m. on major roads at non-intersection locations. Street standards that respond to these trends might require bicycle lanes to be a minimum of six-feet wide instead of five, striped with high-visibility materials.  The bicycle lane width could also be a function of the speed and volume of the adjacent street.  State collision statistics also indicate that children under the age of 15, the most vulnerable cyclists, are more likely to be involved in collisions on local and residential streets.  Cities might establish a Traffic Calming Program and institute neighborhood design guidelines to slow traffic on these streets.