Ensuring the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians is a crucial component of improving overall highway safety. FHWA is integrating improved pedestrian and bicycle system safety analysis and design techniques into transportation planning. FHWA is also developing and implementing performance measurement for pedestrian and bicycle network connectivity.

Spotlight Project: Toward a Shared Understanding of Pedestrian Safety

Creating safe environments for all people to walk is a national priority, critical to addressing multiple converging health, social, environmental, and economic challenges. Numerous strategic plans and partnerships—orchestrated both by U.S. transportation agencies and nongovernmental coalitions—are underway to advance pedestrian safety. The goal of this research is to provide context on pedestrian safety issues, crash patterns and contributing factors, and resulting impacts that may help orient readers from diverse sectors—including advocates, roadway owners and operators, legislators and law makers, real estate developers, businesses and private industries, public health practitioners, researchers, educators, enforcement officers, and others—to identify shared concerns and opportunities to make a difference. The research is not intended to provide policy or infrastructure recommendations but does provide a summary of key references and additional resources.

For more information, see Toward a Shared Understanding of Pedestrian Safety: An Exploration of Context, Patterns, and Impacts.

Spotlight Project: Accomodating Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities

The guide is based on an extensive stakeholder engagement process that involved pedestrians with vision disabilities, including people who were both deaf and blind; orientation and mobility specialists; shared street designers; and Federal, State, and local government officials. The stakeholder engagement process included two multiday workshops, two focus groups, a peer exchange involving shared street designers from across the country, and one-on-one interviews with stakeholders. The guide also included field visits to several shared streets in the United States to gain on-the-spot feedback and insight from pedestrians with vision disabilities, orientation and mobility specialists, local government officials, and others.

Highlights of the guide include: strategies people with vision disabilities use to navigate in the public right-of-way; specific challenges pedestrians with vision disabilities face when navigating shared streets; best practices for the use of tactile walking surface indicators and detectable edges; ideas on how accessibility for pedestrians with vision disabilities can be addressed in the planning and design process; a toolbox of strategies for designing shared streets that improve accessibility for pedestrians with vision disabilities; and a bibliography of sources specifically referenced in the guide and other sources that inspired the guide content and may be useful for shared street designers.

For more information, see Bicycle and Pedestrian Program.

FHWA is researching and deploying innovations in the financing, development, and implementation of multimodal transportation projects that improve connectivity, accessibility, and safety for all system users, including underserved communities.

Spotlight Project: Strategies for Accelerating Multimodal Project Delivery

The Strategies for Accelerating Multimodal Project Delivery report identifies specific strategies and techniques for accelerating multimodal project delivery, prioritizing ways to efficiently and effectively build out connected multimodal networks in concert with major highway, intersection, and bridge projects. The report includes standalone pedestrian and bicycle projects, retrofits in built environments, fixed and flexible route transit and intermodal projects, and ongoing maintenance activities. The report highlights proven techniques that agencies are using to get high-quality results, and opportunities to address barriers or delays in the project delivery process.

Spotlight Project: Guidebook for Measuring Multimodal Network Connectivity

The guidebook focuses on pedestrian and bicycle network connectivity and provides information on incorporating connectivity analysis into State, metropolitan, and local transportation planning processes. The report dives into five core components of pedestrian and bicycle network connectivity: (1) network completeness, (2) network density, (3) route directness, (4) access to destinations, and (5) network quality. The document outlines a five-step analysis process, and highlights methods and measures to support a variety of planning decisions. The report includes examples of current practices, including materials from five case studies conducted as part of the research process.