The need for improving active transportation safety and mobility is clear, as the share of all road user deaths that are pedestrians or cyclists has risen nationally. The US Department of Transportation (US DOT), along with state DOTs across the nation, have made addressing this safety challenge a priority, along with reducing emissions and improving health through increasing the use of active transportation for everyday travel. In many cases, solutions are also clear, including improved infrastructure. So, if the needs and many of the solutions are clear, why are we not making more progress? The answer lies in part within the institutions responsible for setting policy, planning, designing, implementing, and maintaining the transportation system. Simply put, walking, bicycling, and rolling have not been a priority for most agencies. And, sometimes when they are a priority at one level, another level within an agency may be an obstacle. Changing agency practice is essential, ranging from staff knowledge and biases to intergovernmental collaboration to cost-benefit analyses processes, and more. 

The objective of this project is to provide an active transportation institutionalization framework and guide for state DOTs, including a capability maturity model (CMM) for organizational assessment of readiness.

The team is led by Dr. Jennifer Dill at the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University (PSU), along with Nathan McNeil and John MacArthur. Partners include Erin Flanigan at Applied Research Associates (ARA), who has pioneered the application of the Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) CMM assessment framework at multiple transportation agencies and Kelly Rodgers at Streetsmart Planning.