Prioritizing Bicyclist Safety and Mobility: Which Guidance Do I Use?

Historically bicyclists may have been an afterthought and expected to share space with motor vehicles, however, this is outdated attitude is giving way to new approaches found in various bicycle infrastructure design guidance documents. This study used a multi-staged approach to investigate the usage of these guides by state and local agencies. A literature review synthesized literature and published guides on bicycle infrastructure design and was followed by a survey of bicycle / pedestrian coordinators to gather information from practitioners about their use of these design guides. Data collected were analyzed to identify trends, relationships, and gaps in the knowledge about bicycle infrastructure design guidance. From this, it was found that the two federally published guidance documents (the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) and the Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities (GDBF)) were the most frequently utilized by these survey respondents and were noted to be held as the standard for bicyclist infrastructure planning and design by some, however they are sparsely updated and tend not to align with contemporary community expectations. Additionally, states tended to rely on the MUTCD and GDBF while cities utilized a larger variety of guidance documents such as those published by NACTO The data was developed through a survey sent to practitioners from the 50 states of the United States including the district of Columbia and the top 25 most populous cities, survey respondent data were collected.