The ITE Complete Streets Council (CSC) represents and promotes the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, freight, autos, and other forms of travel in the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of complete, multimodal transportation systems. The Council works to position ITE as the go-to resource on multimodal
transportation for its members and as an active partner with other organizations and agencies in this field. Chaired by Lawrence J. Marcus, with Vice Chairs Matthew Roe and Ryan McClain, the Council saw an opportunity last fall to collaborate with the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to develop a new resource to help cities and transportation professionals address the use of curbside space. With Matthew Roe being director of the Designing Cities Initiative at NACTO leading the organization’s
North American street design work, the ITE Complete Streets Council and NACTO partnership was a natural fit, utilizing volunteers and staff from both organizations to support the project work.
Cities across North America are recognizing the value of their curbsides as new modes and travel patterns create increased and varied demands for this space. The urban curbside serves as the interface between the street and the pedestrian space as well as the buildings framing the entire public space. Urban curbside allocations have conventionally been driven by adjacent land use, with parking and loading regulations based on the immediately adjoining building. But this practice has historically prioritized cars as the primary mode of transportation on a street, leaving cities to choose between local uses and mobility—because through-moving cars often do little to support local business and residents. Furthermore, changing usage patterns are driving curbside congestion in many locations, while others are underutilized. With growth of pick-up and drop-off traffic due to Transportation Network Company services, increased urban freight deliveries, increases in bicycle traffic, and continued pedestrian safety challenges, concern about the management of curb space has grown. To make curbside changes possible, leading cities are adopting and acting on policies that develop modal priorities for curb use. In many cases, these policies focus on deemphasizing the storage of empty vehicles for long-term parking in favor of a more flexible approach that may allow streets to be more efficiently shared and used for reliable transit, low stress bicycling, curbside deliveries, passenger pick-ups, green stormwater infrastructure, and small public spaces—as well as managed parking where appropriate.
The new
Curbside Management Practitioner’s Resource, soon to be available online, presents a framework and toolbox for analyzing and optimizing curbside space in this time of change with the aim of prioritizing and maximizing community values and safety. The purpose of this resource is to provide guidance on best practices for curb space allocation policy and implementation based primarily upon the outcomes of tested strategies. The goal is to provide readers the tools and reference material needed to make decisions
pertaining to the allocation of curb space. This includes planning and implementation considerations for curbside management or sharing, policy development, prioritization, available tools and treatments, and evaluation metrics. The resource is intended to be a living document which lends itself to refinement and update as successes and lessons learned from implemented projects, plans, and policies continue to emerge.
ITE and NACTO recently announced this new resource at the
Joint ITE International and Midwestern/Great Lakes Districts Annual Meeting and Exhibit on August 21 at a technical session. This effort is another good example of how ITE Technical Programs Division staff supported ITE council volunteers and those of a partner organization in developing a timely resource that addresses an emerging transportation challenge facing the transportation community. Access the
Curbside Management Practitioner’s Resource and related case studies will be available later this month. Look for continued updates about it through all of ITE’s communications channels.
This blog post is from the September issue of ITE Journal.