High Priority Area: Improving Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety

Program Goal

The goal of this program is to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety, operations, and mobility through a comprehensive program of data collection and analysis, engineering, counter-measure development and evaluation, promotion and public awareness, and technology transfer. The program will lead to improved pedestrian and bicyclist programs, planning tools, engineering implementation guides, policies, and standards for use at the National, State, and local levels.

Background

In recent years, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has been developing a new, expanded statement of policy regarding the non-motorized modes of transportation -- walking and bicycling. In speeches by the Administrator, memos to the regional and division administrators, and most significantly, in the congressionally mandated National Bicycling and Walking Study, the FHWA has taken the position that bicycling and walking are transportation modes that have too long been the "forgotten modes," and that this should change.

The National Bicycling and Walking Study goals are to:

• Double the percentage of all trips made by bicycling or walking.
• Reduce the current number of bicycling and walking injuries and fatalities by 10 percent.

This five-year pedestrian and bicyclist research and development plan is designed to contribute to the achievement of both goals. The plan is based on a careful analysis of the desired outcomes for safety and use, the nature of safety-related problems, the current understanding of factors affecting use of the non-motorized modes, the needs of State and local transportation practitioners, and the current state-of-the-practice.

Scope and Objectives

This program is being sponsored in cooperation with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). As part of a first step toward developing the Pedestrian and Bicyclist Research and Development (R&D) Program Plan, the objectives developed and used in evaluating proposed projects and defining the scope of the program plan were to:

• Enhance our understanding of these problems and needs associated with walking and bicycling.
• Enhance our understanding of how best to design and/or select facilities to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists.
• "Institutionalize" pedestrian and bicyclist considerations in the regular, ongoing policies, plans, standards, and programs of Federal, State, and local transportation agencies.
• Assist highway design engineers in determining how best to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists in new and retrofit highway projects.
• Enable transportation planners to develop high-quality, long-range pedestrian and bicyclist plans and to assess proposed alternatives in terms of the potential for modal shift and air-quality impacts.
• Package and disseminate information and countermeasures in such a way as to encourage widespread application.
• Provide State and local transportation, planning, and highway safety professionals with information on, and access to, the tools they need to implement projects and programs for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Current Research

FHWA Contact: Carol Tan Esse HRDS-20 (202)