Conservation Tools

Make room for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users on your auto-oriented roads. Learn how the complete streets movement provides safe and convenient user access and more choice in transportation modes, and how it has become a major tool for planning to improve communities. Through programs that rethink the physical design of streets, complete streets make cities and towns more livable and appealing to all residents. Learn how communities overcome resistance and how some communities have funded these programs.

These design guidelines for mixed-use centers and residential areas provides design guidance for the city’s streets.

The American Planning Association has a list of website resources on Complete Streets which includes general resources, guidelines, implementation examples, legislation, as well as other related Complete Streets resources.

This website discusses the policies and principals of Complete Streets and provides a number of resources including presentations, fact sheets, and design guidance.

Context sensitive solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders in providing a transportation facility that fits their setting. It is an approach that leads to preserving and enhancing scenic, aesthetic, historic, community, and environmental resources, while improving or maintaining safety, mobility, and infrastructure conditions. This website, intended for state and local transportation agencies as well as community stakeholders, is a clearinghouse of CSS information, including projects, case studies, research, and policy documents..

This publication for the Montgomery County Community Revitalization Program provides an overview of downtown improvements including hard surfaces (i.e. streets, sidewalks, crosswalks, etc.), vegetation, and street furnishings.

A thoroughly detailed, up-to-date technical manual and in-depth report on New Urbanism. New Urbanism, a reaction to sprawl, is a better way to plan and build 21st Century communities. It is based on principles of planning and architecture that work together to create human-scale, walkable communities. A pdf of the report "The New Urbanism: A better way to plan and build 21st Century communities" by the guide's authors is included as a pdf in this library item.

Smart Transportation Guidebook discusses smart transportation principals that address the planning and design of streets in a sustainable manner. The guidebook stresses linking transportation and land use planning and is intended for agencies, local governments, and developers. It includes roadway and roadside guidelines.

This study evaluated road diets at several locations in California and Washington.