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    Policy

    Establish an Executive Directive

    Mayoral directives can kick-start the creation of pedestrian action plans, pedestrian-oriented street design guidelines, and multiagency collaborations to meet safety goals set by mayors. They are often faster and easier to institute than a city council ordinance, but can provide the impetus for city council-crafted bills to institutionalize a mayor’s pro-walking efforts.

  • Retrofit Connectivity
    Land Use

    Retrofit Connectivity

    Providing shorter, more direct street, bicycle, and/or pedestrian connections between existing streets encourages walking and cycling as a means of transportation. New walking and cycling paths increases mobility options for kids and families. Giving drivers route alternatives helps them avoid congestion, reduce travel distances, and improve emergency-response times.

  • sting_walkstepsedits
    Enforcement

    Run Pedestrian Safety Operations

    Pedestrian safety-enforcement operations are police-run, public-education and enforcement efforts to improve driver compliance to pedestrian yield laws. During an operation, one police officer or community volunteer acts as a pedestrian while being monitored by another officer who then pulls over non-yielding drivers to give warnings or citations.

  • Photo Credit: Jason Roberts
    Encouragement & Education

    Demonstrate Street Improvements

    This is a collaborative effort to design and install a one-day demonstration of pedestrian-oriented streetscape improvements along an urban block. Demonstrations often include pedestrian plazas, bike lanes, pop-up businesses, street greenery in planters, extra street lighting, and (rented) sidewalk furniture.

  • Slow Zone, Coventry England. Photo Credit: Amanda Slater
    Design & Engineering

    Create Slow Zones

    Slow zones feature traffic-calming measures such as speed humps, roundabouts, curb extensions, signs, optimized signal timing, and street markings to slow vehicles down to 20 mph within clearly defined areas. Slow zones reduce the number of casualties and collisions not only within those areas, but also on adjacent streets. By creating safer, welcoming streetscapes, slow zones encourage walking and cycling.

Welcome to Walksteps.org!

The online resource for developing strategies toward walkable communities.

Compile and Share Tactics

Collect your favorite tactics from a range of disciplines to create your own strategic plan

Ready To Get Started?

Walksteps Partners

America Walks

Walking is a distinctive and fundamental human activity that yields incredible benefits to our communities. Walkable communities provide affordable, healthy, and enjoyable places to live, work, and play https://samoletplus.ru/plot/. At America Walks, we strive to support you to make your community more walkable. This resource, Steps to a Walkable Community, provides you with the best and brightest strategies to move you toward a more walkable community. We have worked with Sam Schwartz Engineering to capture both time-tested and new and innovative tactics with case studies that are realistic and achievable. Dive in and learn about these exciting initiatives.

Sam Schwartz Engineering

Nearly a third of all car trips taken in this country are a mile or less in length—the equivalent of at most a 20-minute walk. Moving those trips out of cars and onto sidewalks would solve many of our transportation conundrums. We traffic engineers have the technical know-how to construct walkable, transportation-efficient communities. It's time for us to reassume a leadership role in planning for the future well-being of our cities, towns, and suburbs. We can do it by joining medical professionals and city planners and helping to make it happen. That's why Sam Schwartz Engineering is proud to partner with America Walks and present Steps to a Walkable Community: A Guide for Citizens, Planners, and Engineers.

Our Mission

Creating a pedestrian-friendly community often means tackling the challenges to walking from several different angles at the same time. To address that reality, Sam Schwartz Engineering and America Walks teamed up to create the guide Steps to a Walkable Community. This resource features tactics and case studies in multiple disciplines and integrates them with other emerging ideas. This guide is available in multiple formats (website, pdf, and hardcopy) and is also the basis for webinars, trainings, and walkshops™ to help put innovative, multidisciplinary pro-walking tactics in the hands of citizens, planners, and engineers.