Every community aspires to be a great community: visually interesting, vibrant, and eminently livable. Well-designed transportation projects can help make that aspiration a reality. Such projects have the potential to shape a community in ways that go far beyond the project’s original purposes—for example, by bringing economic development, promoting physical health, and improving public safety.

The car-oriented environment created by suburban sprawl is a major impediment to creating healthy, safe communities. But design solutions can provide incentives for people to spend less time in their cars and more time walking, biking, or using public transportation:

• Implement planning guidelines and zoning regulations that promote the close proximity of daily activities so that walking to work, school, shopping, and recreation is possible.
• Provide connected networks of pedestrian-friendly pathways that link neighborhoods and services.
• Design pedestrian and bicycle pathways that are safe and inviting.