Building Resilient States: A Framework for Agencies (Smart Growth America and Governors’ Institute on Community Design, 2015)

Where and how communities grow and build homes, transportation, and other infrastructure is likely not at the forefront of most disaster preparedness agencies’ agenda. Yet a community’s decisions about land use and transportation have significant impacts on how resilient it can be in the face of disasters. This document is intended to introduce and integrate land use and transportation issues into states’ conversations about resilience. Disaster preparedness professionals can use it to understand how strategic decisions about land use and transportation can build communities that are more resilient from the ground up.

The Minnesota Bicycle and Pedestrian Counting Initiative: Implementation Study (Center for Transportation Studies, 2015)

As part of an ongoing collaboration between the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies MNDOT, this research report details the implementation of various types of automatic counters for nonmotorized traffic and assess how to estimate average daily and miles traveled.

A People’s History of Recent Urban Transportation Innovation (Transit Center, 2015)

In the past decade, several cities have transformed their streets by adding bus and bike lanes, creating new pedestrian plazas, and emphasizing the movement of people instead of cars. This new report examines six cities’ recent innovations in urban transportation. It looks at what is behind successful change and found common elements. Based on the experience of the cities studied, TransitCenter recommends actions for transit advocates, policymakers, foundations, and anyone interested in transportation change.

Cities Safer By Design (World Resources Institute, 2015)

A new report examines cities around the world to discover why some have safer streets than others. The authors provide real-world examples and evidence-based techniques to improve safety through neighborhood and street design that emphasizes pedestrians, bicycling, and mass transport, and reduces speeds and unnecessary use of vehicles.

Smart Mobility: Reducing congestion and fostering faster, greener, and cheaper transportation options (Deloitte Public Sector Research, 2015)

Deloitte’s Public Sector Research organization offers a study that found that the expansion of alternative modes of transportation could lead to reduced congestion and other benefits, and identified the types of transportation suited to a city or suburb. The study uses geospatial analytics, such as coupling location data with existing government data, to examine the potential congestion reduction benefits in major metropolitan areas across the U.S. Congestion reduction could result from the expansion of alternative modes of commuting.

Revising the Vermont State Standards; M2D2: Multimodal Development and Delivery (Vermont Agency of Transportation and Smart Growth America, 2015)

This new report identifies specific modifications to the Vermont State Standards, recommends changes to other related VTrans guidelines and policies, and presents an implementation plan and schedule for conducting the revisions. The Vermont State Standards provide VTrans staff and other partners with direction in designing roadway transportation projects.

Analysis of Public Policies that Unintentionally Encourage and Subsidize Sprawl (Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, 2015)

Urban sprawl costs the American economy more than $1 trillion annually. These costs include greater spending on infrastructure, public service delivery and transportation. This report details planning and market distortions that foster sprawl, and smart growth policies that can help correct these distortions.