The long-anticipated 5th edition of the AASHTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities is officially out! Toole Design served as lead author on this monumental resource, which sets a new national standard for safe, comfortable, and connected bikeways in the United States.
More than just an update, the guide underwent a complete overhaul. We integrated current state-of-the-practice guidance, revisited decades-old assumptions, and cited relevant research at every turn. After years of labor (a labor of love, of course!), the new guide navigated AASHTO’s rigorous evaluation and balloting process and ultimately won support from agency representatives in every single state and territory.
We’ve already factored the updated AASHTO guidance into a number of state-level manuals in recent years. Now agencies throughout the nation can bring their own guidance—and, ultimately, their bikeways—into alignment with the new guide.
A new day for non-car travel
The guide’s publication is a watershed moment for bicycling in the United States. For the first time, national guidance states that not only should roadways accommodate bicyclists, but those facilities should be accessible to people of all ages and abilities, connected, and prioritized. “It’s a major break with the past,” said Bill Schultheiss, our director of design and engineering.
“Over the last 15 years, the transportation industry has gone through profound changes. When I began my career in the late 90s, bicycling was seen as an activity for recreation. It is now understood that, if we want people to use bicycling for transportation as well, it is necessary to provide connected networks of high-comfort bikeways.”
The new guide cements that shift, with guidance both major and minor to ensure biking continues to grow as a viable transportation choice.
Better bikeways, and more of them, will result from the new guide.
A peek inside the guide
We’re excited about so many of the concepts that appear in the new guide. While we don’t have room to list them all, here are a few concepts that are notable gamechangers for national bike guidance:
- A strong emphasis on designing for all ages and abilities
- Robust guidance on separated bike lanes
- Intersection design that protects vulnerable users
- Expanded guidance on shared use paths and shared streets
- Design ranges that make clear which values provide safety and comfort
- Expansive street crossing guidance to ensure safe crossings for all users, not just bicyclists
- Guidance to increase comfort and accommodate social cycling
The more than 600-page guide will help practitioners solve common problems, especially in places where bicyclists interact with other roadway users. (Feeling daunted by a 600-page guide? Stay tuned for more information and trainings to help practitioners understand and apply the new guidance!)
What the guide will do
“Better bikeways, and more of them, will result from the new guide,” Schultheiss said, “and it’s just going to happen naturally through normal project delivery. That’s what creates larger change culturally.”
Even as a handful of U.S. cities have installed innovative bike infrastructure on their streets in the past decade, the lack of nationally adopted guidance on concepts such as separated bike lanes left many practitioners hesitant to implement such facilities.
“There are a lot of states that have been reluctant to update their own design guidance,” said Multimodal Design Practice Lead Jeremy Chrzan. “Now this gives them the justification to do that with a level of confidence that [it] aligns with the current state of the practice.” As the new bike guide makes its way onto engineers’ shelves and into state and local standards, safer and more comfortable bikeways can become the norm on roadways throughout the country.
“AASHTO documents are foundational,” said Principal Engineer Tina Fink, who wrote the guide’s chapter on signals. “They are the resource,” and this guide will empower practitioners to make stronger arguments for all ages and abilities infrastructure.
The recommendations in the guide are backed by a robust and growing body of research.
Rooted in research
Chrzan also noted that the recommendations in the guide are backed by a robust and growing body of research. “These AASHTO documents begin as National Cooperative Highway Research Projects,” Chrzan said. Thorough research is “the whole fundamental approach.” By linking guidance to research, the new guide takes a fact-based approach to bikeway design standards. Further, the inclusion of so many references makes every concept traceable and will help ensure future editions remain research-driven.
Our Director of Strategy Andy Clarke said the guide will recast what localities are willing to do to accommodate bikes. “It shifts everyone from the idea that a minimum width bike lane on a high-speed roadway is enough,” he said. Instead, the new guide provides authoritative support for modern treatments that allow people to comfortably and safely choose biking as their mode of travel.
Clarke explains the promise of this new guide through the simple fact that “people behave entirely rationally.” They drive because, as a society, “we’ve gone out of our way to make it easy and comfortable for people to drive,” he said. “We need to make biking and walking as comfortable, safe, and convenient as driving.”
All the tools to do so can be found in the new AASHTO Bike Guide. We can’t wait to see how you use them.
