Bicycle and Pedestrian Community Survey Aims to Highlight Local Accomplishments

Pedestrian crossing in Birmingham

As Southeast Michigan thaws from its long winter, many people have walking and biking on their minds. This is especially true for SEMCOG’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force, which is made up of over 80 members from across our region and will help guide the development of an update to our Bicycle and Pedestrian Travel Plan for Southeast Michigan, originally adopted in 2014. You can learn more about the first meeting here and watch a video on recent successes.

February 2019 task force meeting

Community survey

As SEMCOG begins this update, we have launched a Bicycle and Pedestrian Community Survey to better understand and catalog how local communities incorporate bicycle and pedestrian travel into their planning efforts. This is where your help is needed…please complete this survey so that SEMCOG has a fuller understanding of how your community is planning for and implementing bicycle and pedestrian projects!

One of the first and most important questions this survey will help answer is, “How many communities have a document that includes bicycle and pedestrian planning?” While some of these documents have obvious names like Bicycle and Pedestrian Plans, Nonmotorized Plans, Trails Plans, and Sidewalk Plans, other documents that may include this information are Recreation Plans, Transportation Plans, Active Transportation Plans, Master Plans, DDA Plans, Neighborhood Area Plans, etc.

These plans could be confined within a single community or stretch across multiple communities or counties. Regardless of the name and geographic scope, a key piece of information is a map showing existing and planned bikeways, pathways, and walkways – which SEMCOG uses to create its regional bicycle and pedestrian facility database. This database is used to assess local and regional network connectivity and helps us develop prioritized regional corridors.

Another important question this survey will help answer is the number of communities which have passed Complete Streets policies with resolutions or ordinances. These policies are intended to coordinate communication and planning amongst internal and external agencies so that more holistic implementation can happen. For example, bicycle and pedestrian accommodations could be included as part of a Michigan Department of Transportation roadway restoration project or a water-pipe installation. In 2014, we identified approximately 27 communities with a Complete Streets policy. Have more communities adopted policies since then? This survey will help us answer that question.

Protected bike lane in Detroit

SEMCOG plans to publish a map that will display which communities have a document that includes bicycle and pedestrian planning and/or Complete Streets policies. This map will be useful to MDOT and county road agencies for coordinating their upcoming road projects.

The remaining survey questions will help communities learn from one another. SEMCOG is asking communities to let us know whether they have any bicycle- or pedestrian-related ordinances or best practices that they would like to highlight. These may include ordinances to implement sidewalks, bike parking, walkable town centers, or special local bicycle passing or crosswalk laws. Additionally, we would like to know how communities are paying for infrastructure – local millages, general funds, state/federal grants, or other sources.

Next steps

All of this information will be fed into future task force meetings and upcoming public outreach meetings as we work towards the adoption of the plan in March 2020. Additionally, this will help to update SEMCOG’s bicycle and pedestrian facility database, Bicycle Network Maps, and prioritized regional corridors. You can follow the plan’s progress here.

I encourage you to make sure your community is represented in the results of this study by taking the survey yourself or sharing it with an appropriate colleague in the seven-county SEMCOG region.