Transportation

Design Principles:

1. Equitable: In order to encourage alternative modes of transportation and provide options to driving, streets should be designed to accommodate multiple modes of movement, including pedestrians, transit services, bicycles, passenger cars, and trucks on an equal basis. Transit facilities should be incorporated in the design of all roads to encourage high levels of ridership and cost-efficient operation.

2. Flexible: Road design should reflect adjacent land use types and requirements. Road design standards should be flexible so that a variety of land use types can be adequately served by the same road. Road design should recognize and balance the needs of the travelling public and local residents.

3. Positive Appearance: All roads and streets should be designed to provide a strong visual quality that enhances the amenity of adjacent properties through the use of high quality landscaping, lighting, pavement materials, and on-street parking where appropriate.

4. Living Streets: Street trees should be a major component of the design of all streets. Tree-lined streets provide an evolving and lasting impression of the street, and provide physical buffering between the pavement, the sidewalk and private dwellings. The shading effects of mature street trees have a significant mediating effect on summer sunlight, reducing glare and the urban ‘heat island’ effect.

5. Minimize Pavement Width: The widths of streets should be developed in accordance with operational safety requirements and the provision of an enhanced pedestrian realm. However, the width of travel lane pavements in particular, should be kept as narrow as practically feasible, to encourage traffic to slow down, create more intimate streetscapes, and facilitate pedestrian crossings.

6. Improve Parking Opportunities: On-street parking should be provided wherever possible at existing established commercial locations and in downtowns - even on some arterial roads. On-street parking can reduce requirements for surface parking lots, generally reduces traffic speeds, and supports pedestrian activity by providing a physical barrier between the sidewalk and moving traffic.

Source: Regional Municipality of Niagara, Model Urban Design Guidelines, 2005

Additional Resources:

Burden Dan and Lagerwey Peter: Road Diets - Fixing the Big Roads. Walkable Communities Inc.
http://www.walkable.org/download/rdiets.pdf

Current + Recent Projects: Design and Development Principles for Suburban Arterials Minneapolis: Metropolitan Design Centre, University of Minnesota, 2004.
http://www.designcentre.umn.edu/projects/pre2002/arterials.html

National Government Association: In the Fast Lane: Delivering More Transportation Choices to Break Gridlock. Washington DC, 2000. Government of Ontario: Alternative Development Standards - Making Choices. Toronto, 1995.

Government of Ontario: Breaking Ground - An Illustration of Alternative Development Standards in Ontario’s New Communities. Toronto, 1997.

Environment Canada & Road Salt
http://www.ec.gc.ca/Press/2001/011130-2_b_e.htm

Maintaining and Repairing Roadways
http://www.oracwa.org/Pages/Chap4.pdf

Region of Niagara ‘Regional Bikeways Master Plan’.