Introduction | Method | Hypotheses | Advocacy | Case Studies | Recommendations
Pedestrian Advocacy Movements
US Transportation policy has been dominated by the automobile for a very long time. But in the past 15 years a surge of interest in walking and implementation of more pedestrian friendly design has started to effect a transformation.
Who Advocates for a Better Pedestrian Environment?
Grassroots Advocates
In the 1960s and 1970s community and environmental advocates began to challenge the singular emphasis on highway building by challenging individual freeway projects. In some places, general transportation reform advocacy groups with roots in environmental and social equity movements were formed to try to shift transportation spending to prioritize transit, bicycling and walking.
Contemporary bicycle advocacy was born with the oil crisis and surge of environmental activity in the 1970s, and was marked by development in the 1980s of small but tightly-knit advocacy groups populated by able-bodied bicycle commuters and recreational riders. These groups, now in almost every state, helped give rise in the 1990s to grassroots pedestrian advocacy organizations. Since most people don’t view being a pedestrian as an identity, these groups have faced a more difficult organizational challenge than the bicycle groups. These groups often include disabled individuals.
Transportation Professionals
Pedestrian advocacy has also come from within the fields of planning and engineering. A new generation of urban planners has brought a much more integrated approach to considering pedestrian accommodation as a critical part of the overall streetscape context. An increase in bicycle and pedestrian planner positions at the state, regional, and local level means there is a growing population of planners that specialize in non-motorized planning, particularly in bicycling. Urban planners have played an important role in shifting the dialog from how to fit pedestrians into a street design, to a more detailed look at the fundamental social issues that the design itself is trying to accomplish. Engineers have worked to incorporate better pedestrian guidance into manuals, and more and more engineers are receiving at least rudimentary training in pedestrian design. The Context-Sensitive Design movement, which began in the mid-90s with support from the federal government and the highway establishment, has helped transportation agencies broaden their work to include more stakeholders and consideration of the total transportation environment.
Most recently, another modal interest has started to advocate more effectively for pedestrian facilities: transit agencies. While transit providers were initially resistant to disability access requirements, now transit providers have begun to understand the importance of pedestrian access to stations and buses, and are consciously increasing their partnerships with other pedestrian advocacy interests while seeking funding for pedestrian improvements.
Public Health officials, Architects, Smart Growth Proponents
Much of the push for a better pedestrian environment has come not from pedestrian advocates, but from the work of groups promoting a wider agenda of smart growth, walkable neighborhoods, and improved health. Architects, environmentalists and urban planners see walkability as an essential ingredient in creating compact communities that can reduce driving, save open space, and create more satisfying communities. Disability has been low on their radar screen. The number and strength of these groups multiplied in the 1990s and has had a profound impact on design in many communities. These organizations have carried the walkability message to developers, elected officials, and community leaders. They have been joined over the past six to eight years by public health advocates. The issues of obesity and physical inactivity brought a new focus on the need to create more places to be physically active. Public health groups have brought a new health-based perspective to pedestrian advocacy that emphasizes the benefits of ‘active living.’ The importance of the Active Living movement is the experience that public health practitioners bring in social marketing.
With the increase in advocacy activity, the advocacy community has been struggling to address the different needs of bicyclists and pedestrians, even as both modes often continue to be lumped within the same program. Especially problematic has been conflicts in areas where space is at a premium, and difficult decisions need to be made on the allocation of the extra street space. Advocates are coming to the same conclusion, that more space needs to be taken from automobiles. The different strands of pedestrian advocacy have begun to collaborate, creating strong national and local partnerships that include public health workers, planners, architects, bicycle advocates, and environmentalists. They are developing a more common framework for change that focuses on quality of life as the strategic objective.
Accessibility advocates are becoming part of an existing advocacy movement focused on changing the transportation paradigm. That movement is generally receptive, but in need of education about creating truly accessible streets.
The Role of the Federal Government
Federal transportation policy and spending has an enormous impact on state and local transportation activities, so deserves a short discussion. After decades of highway-only federal spending, in 1990 the Federal Highway Administrator described bicycling and walking as ‘the forgotten modes’ of transportation. In 1991, federal transportation policy underwent a sea change with the adoption by Congress of ISTEA, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. For the first time federal transportation spending was opened up to modes beyond the automobile, and a few programs set aside funding for non-motorized modes. The law required that every state hire a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator. Advocates from the groups above have been able to maintain and expand ISTEA’s provisions in the two subsequent reauthorizations of the law, opening up enormous resources for better pedestrian facilities. However, for the most part this funding as remained separate from conventional transportation funds and conventional projects have not been widely affected.
How Advocacy Has Made a Difference
Much of the successful leadership practiced in planning and designing for pedestrians has come from advocacy efforts. A national literature analysis points to a groundswell of new materials and guidance documents. Though there are exceptions, most pedestrian advocacy material does not address the design for persons with disabilities. Just as bicycle and pedestrians are finding common ground in inclusion, the movement as a whole is at the early stages of incorporating accessible design as part of standard best practice for design to equitably include all users of our streets.
Pedestrian advocacy efforts vary: a focus on national or state policy, local policies and ordinances, community-based organizing, specific local projects, and community stakeholder advocacy. Advocates are on a wide spectrum between working very collaboratively with government and being very confrontational. Some groups are made up of mostly volunteers while others have a robust organization with well-developed outreach and advocacy programs.
The following is a summary, though far from exhaustive, of some of the dominant organizations and movements working for pedestrian advocacy today. You’ll see that many of them overlap and collaborate.
Modal Advocacy
America Walks
America Walks is a national coalition of local pedestrian advocacy groups. It offers resource materials, a speaker’s bureau and local pedestrian advocacy conference support. It has a strong presence in the Transportation Research Board (TRB) committee system.
Web Site: America Walks (www.americawalks.org)
National Center for Bicycling and Walking
The National Center for Bicycling and Walking has helped build and broaden the bicycle and pedestrian advocacy movement. NCBW is the host of the bi-annual Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike conference, a large North American conference that attracts advocates, government planners, consultants, and public health officials. NCBW provides an array of solid resources on its website, and has helped the public health community understand and become involved in transportation planning.
NCBW published Increasing Physical Activity Through Community Design: A Guide for Public Health Practitioners (see literature review), which focuses on project-level strategies. The preferred dimensions for pedestrian facilities exceed the ADA guidelines, and the guide explicitly states to use the ADA requirements as ‘the minimum design specifications’ on all streets and highways. The focus is on sidewalk width and sidewalk continuity through the streetscape. None of the other features of good sidewalk design are emphasized. However, they also cover sidewalk maintenance policy, snow removal, buffer zones, and land uses.
Web Site: National Center for Bicycling and Walking (www.bikewalk.org)
Bicycle Advocacy
Bicycle advocacy is the most developed and politically sophisticated of the non-motorized advocacy groups. Bicycle advocacy groups have usually not addressed disability issues directly. However, a certain affinity with wheelchair and scooter users has been cultivated in some communities.
League of American Bicyclists
This is the oldest nationwide membership bicycle advocacy group representing the interests of bicyclists. Its mission is “to promote bicycling for fun, fitness and transportation and work through advocacy and education for a bicycle-friendly America.” The League’s membership includes 40,000 individuals and 600 affiliated organizations, including many local recreational bicycle clubs. It has had an effective voice on Capitol Hill, successfully lobbying for increased funding for bicycle/pedestrian facilities. The League has been very active in the Complete Streets and Safe Routes to School movements, and runs a robust Bicycle Friendly Communities program, which designates communities based on a rigorous application procedure, and annual celebrations of Bike Month and Bike to Work Day.
Web Site: League of American Bicyclists (www.bikeleague.org)
Thunderhead Alliance
The Thunderhead Alliance serves the needs of the nation’s state and local bicycle advocacy groups, supporting development of new organizations, providing trainings, and creating replicable advocacy models. Thunderhead has also launched a ‘Benchmarking’ project to document progress in bicycle/pedestrian facilities and use. Thunderhead recently expanded its mission to include pedestrian advocacy groups, and one of its main programs is an ambitious Complete the Streets Campaign.
Web Site: Thunderhead Alliance (www.thunderheadalliance.org)
This is only a partial list of the eight national bicycle organizations. America Bikes, a coalition of all national bicycle groups formed to work on federal policy, includes a list of all member organizations on its website, America Bikes (www.americabikes.org).
National Safe Routes to School Partnership
The Safe Routes to School Partnership was formed in 2005 to ensure effective implementation of the new federal Safe Routes to School program, which is delivering $612 million to states to create safe walking and bicycling environments around schools and to promote walking to school. The Partnership has recently formed a task force that plans to write a paper on SRTS and disability access, examining what is out there and what is missing in SRTS initiatives for disabled children.
Web SIte: National Safe Routes to School Partnership (http://bikesbelong.org/page.cfm?PageID=249)
Surface Transportation Policy Project
This national non-profit was formed to shift federal transportation spending priorities toward smarter transportation choices that enhance the economy, improve public health, promote social equity, and protect the environment. It succeeded with the passage of ISTEA in 1991, and served as a focal point for coalition efforts to maintain and expand ISTEA’s innovations in the two subsequent reauthorizations. Their upcoming guide to the new transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, may be a good resource.
Web Site: Surface Transportation Policy Project (www.transact.org)
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
The AARP has been strongly supportive of creating a better pedestrian environment as part of its support of livable communities where seniors can ‘age in place’ as their needs change as they grow older. AARP defines a livable community as ’one that has affordable and appropriate housing, supportive community features and services, and adequate mobility options, which together facilitate personal independence and the engagement of residents in civic and social life.’
AARP’s interest in Livable Communities cuts across a variety of program areas; activities include a health-related program to promote more walking, active support and involvement in the National Complete Streets Coalition and significant research on the need for more transportation options for older Americans, including walking. The AARP issued a major report, Beyond 50.05 – Livable Communities: Creating Environments for Successful Aging in 2005, which examines whether communities serve the needs of persons of all ages, especially those 50 and older, and presents AARP’s prescription for improving them. The report, for the first time establishes a link between the qualities of livable communities and Americans’ ability to age successfully.
Based on the research, the AARP has created Livable Communities: An Evaluation Guide. This guide contains survey forms for Transportation and Walkability. A big part of aging in place is preserving options as people begin to face physical limitations. Much of AARP’s transportation work has focused on ensuring that aging people can drive as long as possible, but an increasing portion of their work recognizes that older Americans need other options once they are no longer able to drive. Their Mobility Options division has produced a number of good reports, including Stranded without Options, Community Mobility Options: The Older Persons Interest,and Understanding Senior Transportation.
Web Sites:
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
(www.aarp.org/research/international//portfolio/livable.html)
Creating Environments for Successful Aging
(www.aarp.org/research/housing-mobility/indliving/beyond_50_communities.html)
Transportation Home Page
(www.aarp.org/research/housing-mobility/transportation/)
National Complete Streets Coalition
Complete Streets is a policy approach that refers to ‘any policy, resolution, law, internal directive, or other document which requires routinely building and reconstructing streets to be safe and convenient for all users, including pedestrians of all ages and abilities, bicyclists, transit users and vehicles, and automobiles.’
The National Complete Streets Coalition is working for adoption of complete streets policies at the federal, state, regional, and local level. It acknowledges that planners and engineers have learned much about how to build this way, but in most communities such streets remain the hard-won exception – outdated automobile-oriented standards and procedures mean most roads are still designed and constructed just for automobiles. The National Complete Streets Coalition’s goal is to make complete streets the norm, and end the project-by-project fight for better roads.
The Coalition is raising funds and working with partners on projects to spread the word about the benefits of complete streets; to build the Coalition supporting the concept; and to help jurisdictions get it right when they are ready to adopt a complete streets policy.
The Coalition is run by an active steering committee with participation by many grassroots modal interests, professional organizations, and smart growth groups, including transit agencies, bicycling, and walking advocacy groups and planning and engineering organizations; many of them are listed here. The US Access Board has been provided technical assistance since the Coalition’s inception, and two disability groups are presented on the Steering Committee, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the American Council for the Blind. The website includes resources on disability access.
Web Site: National Complete Streets Coalition (www.completestreets.org)
Advocacy by Transportation Professionals
Context-Sensitive Solutions
The Context-Sensitive Solutions movement developed in the mid-90s as highway builders, state Departments of Transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration sought ways to modify the strict engineering approach to highway construction that prompted so many community protests. The U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration offers the following definition: ‘Context sensitive Solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders to develop a transportation facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic, historic, and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and mobility. CSS is an approach that considers the total context within which a transportation improvement project will exist.’
Many states are adopting CSS principles of stakeholder involvement and consideration of community context as they develop state highway plans and design guides. Most notably, a new guide put out by the State of Massachusetts calls for both Context-Sensitive Solutions and Complete Streets (see literature review). Many organizations listed here are involved in planning for context-sensitive solutions; for example, the Project for Public Spaces maintains the context sensitive solutions website listed below.
Context-Sensitive Solutions has focused more on the aesthetic considerations of highway planning than on transportation needs, and there is little evidence of inclusion of disability access issues. Its emphasis on stakeholder involvement is an opening for more consideration of disability issues.
Web Sites:
FHWA and Context Sensitive Solutions
(www.fhwa.dot.gov/csd)
Context Sensitive Solutions
(www.contextsensitivesolutions.org)
State Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinators
ISTEA required every state to hire a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator. Some states have expanded that role, hiring separate bicycle and pedestrian positions and even additional staff, but each state has one designated coordinator. The coordinators meet annually, and many are members of the AASHTO Joint Technical Committee on Non-Motorized Transportation. While some coordinators remain isolated within their DOTs, they represent the national leadership in planning for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Web Sites:
State Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Coordinators
(http://design.transportation.org/?siteid=59&pageid=852)
AASHTO Joint Technical Subcommittee on Non-Motorized Transportation
(http://design.transportation.org/?siteid=59&pageid=761)
Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals
APBP is an advocacy-oriented trade association. It is made up of planners and engineers who work as bicycle and pedestrian coordinators, as well as those who work for consulting firms. Many bicycle and pedestrian advocates are also members. APBP has been quite active in accessible design issues. APBP worked with the FHWA to create an accessible design course (see literature review), and features accessibility issues in its annual meeting. Many individual APBP members are also proficient in ADA design requirements, and serve as advocates within transportation departments for accessibility.
Web SIte: Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (www.apbp.org)
The Institute of Transportation Engineers
This professional organization has participated in a number of initiatives around improving the pedestrian environment, including traffic calming, Pedestrian engineering awards, and support of the National Complete Streets Coalition. ITE has also worked directly with the US Access Board to publicize the proposed new Public Right of Way standards.
ITE is working with the Congress for the New Urbanism, the FHWA, and the EPA to develop new recommended practices for integrating street design in urban areas with community context. The collaboration is currently developing two publications that will provide planning and design guidance. While roads have traditionally been classified according to the amount and type of traffic they carry, this new effort seeks to integrate those attributes with the attributes of the area surrounding the road – whether it be a dense downtown district or a lower-density residential neighborhood. The Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities has been published as a proposed recommended practice of ITE:
Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities: An ITE Proposed Recommended Practice (www.epa.gov/dced/ite_context.htm)
Walkable Communities
Walkable Communities is a non-profit founded in 1996 by urban planner Dan Burden in Florida, and represents the type of pedestrian advocacy fostered by professional planners and engineers. Burden, a former transportation planner for the state of Florida, helps whole communities, whether they are large cities, small towns, or parts of communities, i.e. neighborhoods, business districts, parks, school districts, subdivisions, specific roadway corridors, etc., become more walkable and pedestrian friendly. Burden recently joined the consulting firm of Glatting-Jackson, but continues to do work through Walkable Communities Inc.
Dan Burden is considered by many to be the father of ‘’’walkability’’’ in this country. He has held workshops in cities and towns across the country, and has worked collaboratively with advocates from all backgrounds. His demonstration projects have produced much of the case materials that people use in advocacy work. The Walkable Communities approach engages citizens in the ’’evolving process of managing the movement of people and goods for health, safety, efficiency, and community-building,’’ which otherwise would be left to the traffic engineer. Three measures of increased ’’’livability’’’ are used: safety, ‘’access and mobility,’ and ’’quality of life.’’
Community process is the key to the transformation of streets. Burden designed a Walkability Audit as a process to bring all stakeholders of a community together to assess the problems, values, and desires of neighborhoods. Data collection for prioritizing changes comes from citizen audits, charrettes and citizen advocacy for specific designs. The process involves education on traffic calming tools, local priorities and costs. While there are some inconsistencies in how Burden applies the concepts of ADA design, overall he advocates that accessible design is good design for everyone. Burden states, ‘’Safer streets balance mobility and access for all users, particularly pedestrians and bicyclists. This is especially important for children, seniors, and persons with disabilities.’’
Web Site: Walkable Communities (www.walkable.org)
American Planning Association
The APA is the trade association for planners of all types and at all levels. They have a large research department that issues “Planner Advisory Service” reports, and they issue both the Journal of the American Planning Association and the more popular “Planning” magazine, and a number of other targeted publications. A transportation division deals with all sorts of transportation planning issues, and pedestrian, bicycle, traffic calming, and disability planning issues have all been covered by APA articles, conference sessions, and web seminars. For example, a recent web seminar presented information on Universal Design (www.planning.org/audioconference/topical.htm). The APA is an active member of the National Complete Streets Coalition.
Web Site: American Planning Association (www.planning.org)
Consulting Firms
A few private transportation consulting firms specialize in designing for non-motorized travel; and some firms emphasize multi-modal design and New Urbanist and Smart Growth principles. Some of the largest, most mainstream firms include individuals or departments that focus on non-motorized transportation. In many communities with limited professional planning staffs, these firms are very important in bringing new ideas into the community. Two firms that focus on bicycle/pedestrian planning are Alta Planning + Design, and the Toole Design Group.
Smart Growth / Livability
Smart growth is development that serves the economy, the community, and the environment. It changes the terms of the development debate away from the traditional growth/no growth question to how and where should new development be accommodated. Smart Growth answers these questions by simultaneously achieving:
- Healthy communities -- that provide families with a clean environment. Smart growth balances development and environmental protection -- accommodating growth while preserving open space and critical habitat, reusing land, and protecting water supplies and air quality.
- Economic development and jobs -- that create business opportunities and improve local tax base; that provide neighborhood services and amenities; and that create economically competitive communities.
- Strong neighborhoods -- which provide a range of housing options, giving people the opportunity to choose housing that best suits them. It maintains and enhances the value of existing neighborhoods and creates a sense of community.
- Transportation choices -- that give people the option to walk, ride a bike, take transit, or drive.
Smart growth is multi-disciplinary in nature. Originally the movement was much more focused on land use planning, zoning, and transportation. Eventually, building safe, healthy, and livable communities were incorporated. One of the strengths of the smart growth movement is that economic diversity is seen as key to smart environmental planning. Neighborhoods should be integrated with mixed income and mixed use communities built for everyone.