City May Adopt Bike-, Pedestrian-Friendly Layouts for Roadways
The City-owned streets in El Paso may look very different in the future if City Council this week adopts new design guides for roadway planning. City Representatives will consider incorporating the “Urban Street Design Guide” and “Urban Bikeway Design Guide” as official design guidelines for “bicycle facility and other city funded street and roadway improvement projects.” Both guides were developed by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).
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| Sidewalk design elements include (from left to right) a frontage zone (extension of the building), a pedestrian through zone, a street furniture/curb zone, and a buffer zone which includes a bike lane in this illustration. (nacto.org) |
According to NACTO’s website (nacto.org), the “Urban Street Design Guide” helps cities make streets “safer, more livable, and more economically vibrant.” NACTO sees streets as having an ever-expanding set of needs and not simply as traffic corridors, with an emphasis on accommodating all modes of movement including vehicles, bicycles, transit, and pedestrians. As the website stresses, streets make up 80 percent of public space.
