2007 Benchmarking Report - Alliance for Biking & Walking

Denver, CO receives Bicycle-Friendly-Community award
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN BICYCLISTS
NCBW identified four benchmarks: presence of statewide longrange
plan for bike/pedestrian elements, accommodating bikes
into all transport projects, accommodating pedestrians into all
state highway projects, and other special programs.
NCBW assessed whether each state met national standards
for these Benchmarks. Results were reported as “Yes” or
“No” for each state meeting all or part of the benchmark, and
summarized by each benchmark. They concluded that most
state DOTs did not meet the benchmarks they identified for
bicycle and pedestrian planning, accommodation (design), and
special programs. All four of the benchmarks they identified are
addressed in some way in Chapter 5 of this report. Although
Thunderhead’s surveys did not frame questions in the same
way, its review and discussion of complete streets policies, Safe
Routes to School, and other bicycle and pedestrian policies addresses
many of the same issues covered in NCBW’s report.
Evaluating Walkability & Bikeability of Communities
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center’s Walkability
and Bikeability checklists are another means of evaluating
conditions for bicycling and walking. These checklists are
community tools that allow individuals to subjectively score their
communities. The document invites individuals to go for a walk
or bike ride with survey in hand and to rate their experience on
a scale of one to five while checking off potential problems. The
document then goes through each question and offers potential
solutions to common problems and also provides a list of resources
at the end. This survey could be useful for community
stakeholders wishing to gain insight into “bikeability” or “walkability.”
It could also be used by advocates in coordinated education
efforts or to raise public perception of a problem area.
National Bicycle & Pedestrian Documentation Project
While not a benchmarking project per se, the National
Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project is addressing a
critical component of all benchmarking efforts for bicycling and
walking: trip counts. A more accurate and standardized way of
measuring biking and walking trips would result in far more accurate
benchmarking results. The National Bicycle and Pedestrian
Documentation Project, coordinated by the Institute of Transportation
Engineers, sets detailed standards and guidelines and
provides tools for performing bicycle and pedestrian counts and
surveys in communities. The objectives of the project are to:
“ (1) Establish a consistent national bicycle and pedestrian
count and survey methodology, building on the ‘best practices’ from
around the country, and publicize the availability of this free material
for use by agencies and organizations on-line.
(2) Establish a national database of bicycle and pedestrian
count information generated by these consistent methods and practices.
(3) Use the count and survey information to begin analysis on
the correlations between various factors and bicycle and pedestrian activity.
These factors may range from land use to demographics to type
of new facility.”
As of the publication date of this report, 30 cities have
conducted counts using these methodologies for pedestrians, cyclists
and multi-use trails, with most counts to date having been
for multi-use trails..
INTRODUCTION
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Bicycling & Walking in the U.S./ Thunderhead Alliance 2007