Using the Tool

• Review any existing bicycle or pedestrian plans:
  • How current are they? Are they so old, that a walking and biking audit could help jump-start a new planning process?
  • Did they include community input?
  • What has happened with the recommendations?
  • Do they provide information useful in identifying target areas for more detailed walking and biking audits?
  • If no previous bicycle or pedestrian planning has been done, or plan completed, consider undertaking a plan, including audits. Funding opportunities may be explored through the State’s Department of Transportation bicycle and pedestrian program.
• If you decide to do an audit as part of an overall planning process or update to an existing plan, contact your MPO or RPO and the COG for information about funding or technical assistance possibilities.
• Identify target area for walking and bicycle audit based on your findings, stakeholder input or known areas of concern.
• If the area includes a school, determine if the school already has a Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program or Task Force, and if so, engage them in the process of the audit.
• Meet with interested school officials, stakeholders, residents, and students to determine the capacity and interest for engaging in a walking and bicycling audit in the proposed areas, or in other or additional areas they might propose.
• Establish the audit team, which should include community members, stakeholders, and at least one transportation planner or engineer. Organize a day or series of days to conduct the audit. Inform the team of the area’s demographics, and any facilities that may be of special interest or serve special populations. In one community, the town center was directly across from a college campus that had as part of its mission serving students with disabilities…important to know when conducting an audit!
• Instruct the team with the essential knowledge of how to review conditions. This should include a presentation covering issues such as: narrow, broken, or lack of sidewalks, wide intersections with no pedestrian crossing, lack of pedestrian crossing signals, a built environment or land use pattern that contributes to unsafe walking conditions (i.e. vacancy, buildings far from the street, uses with limited activity hours), lack of or insufficient lighting, lack of or insufficient bicycle facilities, or topographic and other natural environment challenges. Provide team with measurement tools, a camera, a map with street names, paper, and reflective safety vests. Remind the team to be on the lookout for any existing challenges bicyclists or pedestrians may face.
• Reconvene after the audit to debrief and share results and ideas. Identify individual(s) to be the point person to compile data and prepare the report.
• Finalize the report and share with neighborhood groups, the planning department, school administrators, and state agencies (i.e. DOT) to encourage capital investment to improve conditions for walking and bicycling.
• If done as part of an overall planning process, develop recommendations in formats needed to make the report useful for state DOT engineers and for CIP planning.
• Revisit the audit ever two to three years to determine if improvements have been achieved in the network.