Second Edition

Washington, D.C. (October 12, 2012)—Transportation commissioners and directors from America’s largest cities have announced the release of the second edition of the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a toolkit for designing safer streets for bicyclists published by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).

NACTO, an association that shares transportation best practices and experience among its members and represents cities on national transportation issues, launched a comprehensive update to this groundbreaking manual less than a year after U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called the Urban Bikeway Design Guide “an extraordinary piece of work that’s long overdue.” The latest edition, which is accompanied by an interactive online guide, features a new chapter on Bicycle Boulevards—enhanced, low-stress, low-speed streets parallel to major roads, along with additional information on the best practices for green colored pavement. The new edition builds on a body of work that has already reached cities large and small and continues to advance America’s progress towards becoming a more bicycle-friendly nation.

“The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide has proven that a strong coalition of cities can act swiftly, thoroughly and decisively to improve how streets are designed and built in this country,” said New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner and NACTO President Janette Sadik-Khan. “NACTO offers cities around the country a new toolkit for designing city streets, and we are pleased to see that cities are using those tools to make streets safer and more sustainable.”

The first edition of the guide, released online in March 2011 and in print that October, made major strides in spreading the pioneering work of cities across the country, including New York, San Francisco, and Portland. It was the first national guide to offer standards for cycle tracks or protected bike lanes, which provide more separation between cyclists and motor vehicle traffic. Protected bike lanes, which are a ubiquitous feature of cycling capitals like Copenhagen, Montreal and Amsterdam, are becoming more prevalent in the U.S. and provide unprecedented safety not just for bicyclists but for everybody who uses the road.

The Urban Bikeway Design Guide dovetails with the work of transportation agencies and organizations around the country to promote bicycling as a safe, convenient mode of transportation. Users of the guide have access to detailed plan drawings, three-dimensional renderings of the designs and pictures of actual projects built in the United States.

The NACTO Guide can be adopted by individual cities, counties or states as either a stand-alone document or as a supplement to other roadway guidance documents. The Urban Bikeway Design Guide is an interactive document that can be found online at http://www.c4cguide.org and www.citiesforcycling.org. The print edition of the NACTO Guide may be ordered at http://islandpress.org/nacto.

Development of the Guide was supported by the Summit Foundation, SRAM Corporation and the Bikes Belong Foundation.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials, NACTO, is a membership network that provides support and resources for city transportation officials in cities of all sizes. Member Cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC. The current NACTO president is Janette Sadik-Kahn, Department of Transportation commissioner of New York City.