| 2. Transportation Planning:
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The U.S. Dept. of Transportation's (US DOT) web site is a good jumping off point to the enormous array of programs and information the federal government has on transportation. You'll find links that will take you to relevant agencies and libraries.
For citizen planners, you'll most likely be interested in the Federal Highway Administration's web site (the FHWA is an agency within the U.S. DOT), and, perhaps, that of the Federal Transit Administration. The FHWA's site offers reams of information on its many program areas. Of particular interest is their office of Planning, Environment, and Real Estate Services, which, in turn, covers plenty of ground. The Federal Transit Administration site is structured in a completely different manner than the FHWA's (clearly, there are multiple Web designers at work within the US DOT), but also provides copious amounts of information.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the National Transportation Library are actually located within the U.S. DOT. If there is any type of national-level transportation data you're searching for, a good place to check is the BTS web site. The National Transportation Library undoubtedly has the largest collection of transportation studies and articles on the Web. A large number of articles & publications can be downloaded or accessed via web links from the library's digital collection, which is searchable by keyword; abstracts are also provided for each article. Having said this, the National Transportation Library can be overwhelming and somewhat cumbersome to use. Citizen planners may well find more readily accessible information for community transportation planning purposes in the non-governmental web sites listed below (or by checking your state transportation department's web site, or that of your Metropolitan Planning Organization, if you have one). You can locate web sites for MPOs from across the country on the Assocation of Metropolitan Planning Organizations' site.
The Surface Transportation Policy Project is a non-profit coalition advocating for a more balanced transportation policy (i.e., one that focuses more on pedestrian needs, and less on new highway construction). They've published a number of excellent reports of interest to citizen planners. Their most recent report, for example, deals with the impacts of our aging population on transportation needs. STPP's reports are all available to download. You can also view the contents of STPP's excellent bi-monthly Progress newsletter. Finally, the STPP site provides news on the latest developments related to the federal surface transportation law.
One of the most useful transportation planning resources on the Web is the Victoria Transport Policy Institute's TDM Encyclopedia (that stands for "transportation demand management"). We've regularly referred to it over the past three years when we needed to learn more about transportation strategies being discussed by planners today: ride sharing; congestion pricing; HOV (high occupancy vehicle) priority; traffic calming; and so on. The Encylopedia has extensive cross-links, so it's easy to move between related topics. If you're dealing with transportation issues in your community, and need background on techniques you've been hearing about, try searching the TDM Encyclopedia. And the Online TBM Encyclopedia is just one part of the non-profit Victoria Institute's extensive site.
The National Center for Bicycling & Walking; Active Living By Design; the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center; and Walkable Communities maintain web sites that focus on pedestrian and bicycling issues -- and their relationship to local planning. The four organizations have overlapping objectives and, in fact, there are linkages between their web sites. To highlight just a few aspects of these sites: The National Center for Bicycling & Walking site provides detailed information about Safe Routes to School, an effort that is quickly proving popular across the country. You can also subscribe to a twice monthly emailed newsletter, CenterLines (it is also archived on the site). Active Living By Design is part of the School of Public Health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program (and web site) focuses on the need for better integrating physical activity into our daily lives; this necessarily has led to its interest in local planning. The Foundation has provided active living grants to a number of communities, and is also funding research. The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) is another excellent source of information for citizen planners, providing an extremely well-designed set of linked web sites. Just one example of useful information available on their web site, Walkability and Bikeability checklists. The PBIC is a program of the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center in cooperation with the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. Walkable Communities is a Florida based non-profit that does workshops across the country on promoting more pedestrian-oriented planning and design. On their web site you'll find an excellent resource, a searchable Image Library of over 2,500 images, grouped by category (this is co-sponsored with the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center and the Institute of Transportation Engineers).
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