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Pushing the Design Boundaries for the Built Environment

Innovations could encourage the production or design of elements that enable physical activity by all populations. Download the 23-page pamphlet (pdf 988 kb) with illustrated design considerations to encourage walking and bicycling by a broader popluation.

By Anne Lusk, Ph.D.Harvard School of Public Health and Jonathan Harris, The Cecil Group, Inc.
Sponsored by WalkBoston, Arliington Transportation Advisory Committee, and Arlington Safe Routes to School

Introduction

Walking, bicycling, and jogging could take place near where people live, could be a form of transportation, and could provide affordable physical activity for all populations using roads, sidewalks, and shared-use paths. The question is: what urban and rural forms would enable physical activity for all populations.

The American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) provide design guidelines for bicycle facilities with a primary focus on facilities for bicyclists in the road. (On-road bicycle facilities include such essential provisions as paved shoulders,increased lane widths, proper drain grates, signed shared roadways, intersection markings, and painted bike lanes.) While these provisions are very necessary, children and individuals who are less apt to engage in physical activity are probably less likely to bicycle with car traffic, at least until they learn the skills of the road. They might feel comfortable on a shared-use path (bicycle or recreation path) but these paths are often a distance away from where they live, necessitating the leisure time to travel to the path, use the path, and travel home. Thus, recreation paths do not always provide opportunities for physical activity that is a routine part of the day such as to travel to work, school, or the store.

AASHTO also provides design guidelines for pedestrian facilities with appropriate adherence to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements and considerations for the blind. Many communities ban bicyclists and in-line skaters on sidewalks fulfilling these requirements, but then a person can only get to community center stores if they arrive by car, transit, bicycling in the road, or walking. Therefore, the less skilled bicyclist or the in-line skater cannot get to the stores in a community center, such as a grocery store,because they are banned from riding on the sidewalk and not skilled enough to bicycle or in-line skate in the road.

AASHTO members serve as volunteers and do not have a federal mandate, as in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Therefore, AASHTO guidelines do not have to describe equitable built environments for all skill levels that provide unilateral access to destinations. Also, while the AASHTO guidelines are intended as helpful tools, many states use them as mandated or defacto design guidelines. A bicycle facility design that is not included in the AASHTO design guidelines cannot be built using federal funds, except in specific instances and with special approval given the conditions. As one example, Vassar Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts provides European cycle tracks as smooth-surfaced paths level with the brick sidewalk on both sides of the street for in-line skaters and bicyclist who might not prefer to travel in the road. These sidepaths could not be built using federal funds because the sidepath designs are not in the AASHTO bicycle design guidelines. Therefore, MIT paid for these innovative and physical activity-enabling sidepaths on Vassar Street.

Additionally, the U.S.Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration has a Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) standards that offer excellent signs used by car drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, and children traveling to school. For understandable reasons, signs placed along or in roads must comply with MUTCD standards to provide the traveling public with a uniform sign system. The primary objectives of the MUTCD signs have been to inform car drivers in the road because that has been the largest application of signs. MUTCD also works to provide the signs with simplified graphic language and recognizable shapes.

By contrast, the design guidelines for bicyclists,walkers,pedestrians,and in-line skater's facilities and the associated sign systems are different in other countries. For example, Europe, Canada, and China offer design guidelines for cycle tracks, sidepaths, and sideways parallel to but separate from the sidewalk that enable physical activity for slower bicyclists or in-line skaters who prefer not to be in the road. They also have implemented Woonerfs, or child supportive streets. The signage shows a child playing in the residential street alongside adjacent resident's parked cars; in reality it is a shared street for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorized vehicles. Safety comes from the restricted speed due to the variety of transportation methods sharing the roadway. Additionally,they have crosswalk signals specifically designed at the scale and position for pedestrians and bicyclists. These examples are just a few of the solutions that are waiting for considerate designers and communities to adapt to their neighborhoods.

Download the 23-page pamphlet (pdf 988 kb) with illustrated design considerations to encourage walking and bicycling by a broader popluation.

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Building trails
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Management and maintenance
Health & fitness
Safety & liability
Planning

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