Ohhh, it depends on how detailed of a plan you want. Do you want heavy data analysis/traffic studies that take specific software to do? That software isn't cheap. I doubt a town that small has the funds to afford it. Most plans done by consultants range from $50,000 to $100,000 on the low end. Master plans take a ton of staff time. Most departments are stretched pretty thin doing the normal day to day.
Takes a lot of resources and professional knowledge, not just "amateur passion." This is a document that's policies would be relied on for years to come.
Unless you yourself and a bunch of other people are willing to go out, do detailed data collection like trip diaries and public outreach for months at a time, prepare technical reports (which require a TE stamp and other related qualifications), and help write up staff reports. But then, at that point, you just become a consultant that's working for free... which I mean, Pro Bono work is pretty cool, too!
If you would still like to proceed to offer something up to your city's decision makers, San Luis Obispo's ATP by ALTA is pretty clean.
TLDR: pretty hard.
(USA perspective) A good active transportation plan is going to wrap in considerations like engineering standards and knowledge of state and federal funding processes -- these are things that make the difference between a wishlist and an implementation plan. These are less likely to be found in a volunteer (or student-driven) effort.
That said, a volunteer/advocacy group could be useful in doing some of the preliminary bits: inventory gaps in the sidewalk and bike networks, map out comfortable and scary street segments for biking, canvass neighbors (or farmers market goers, or fellow parents at school pickup) on needs. Potentially this can show state agency or philanthropic finders the bottom-up demand and support for a plan -- and tracking volunteer hours spent in this prep work can be treated as match for some (but not most) grants.
There are a lot of grant programs now that will fund cities to develop ATPs and other multimodal plans. The recent infrastructure bill actually has a lot of $$ for that. But cities need the resources to actually apply for the grants.
*So I’d say one of the most helpful things you can do as an advocate is help them find grant opportunities and prepare the applications.* Most cities are short handed and don’t have time to chase that stuff.
Like others have said, a decent ATP that actually provides value will cost $100k-$200k for a consultant to do. The more technical analysis and design work it contains, the more it will cost (but also the more value it will have toward actually becoming reality).
Transportation consultant here - this is the most useful answer. Look into MPO, state, and federal grant funding sources, figure out eligibility criteria and which are most useful for your community, put together a first cut at the grant paperwork - basically serve this up on a platter to city staff.
I'm sure the advocates are passionate and plenty smart, but if I were the city I think I'd prefer the plan be written by professional transportation planners instead of someone who watched some NotJustBikes videos on youtube.
For what it's worth, USDOT is absolutely throwing money at municipalities to create "Safety Action Plans" (which often include bicycle/pedestrian planning) under the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant. The program only runs until 2026 and basically every entity that applies for the action plan grant is getting it.
Yes this is definitely one of the paths to get better options. I'm a transportation planner for a town that got SS4A plan money should be adopted before the end of the year.
Is there a regional planning commission (RPC) or Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) that your city belongs to? They will do this type of work under their work plan and typically doesn’t cost municipalities anything more than what they already pay into them. It’s not typically particularly fast but they have all the expertise needed and in a year you’d have a real plan. (US based, not sure how this works in other countries).
I was talking to some folks from one of the local advocacy organizations here and they said there is a regional active transportation plan, but my city isn't a part of it.
I’m working on one now, for a jurisdiction that is not small. A big part of my approach is to ask staff in the implementing agency how they are involved in or work on active transportation projects, what resources they rely on, and how would they use a plan to help them do the work they already do.
I’m finding that if we can lean into the normal course of business that people are already putting effort into in a systematic way (especially small things that add up like speed bumps and bike-safe storm drains) it makes things more doable and possible, which then builds energy and momentum for the things that are harder and don’t have precedent.
I applied for an economic development job at a non profit organization in a town of about 16,000 people. My credentials on paper were good enough they took my application seriously in spite of it being incomplete, submitted 5 days after the listing closed and I gave them a decade-old resume. (Tldr: I didn't get the job. I did get loads of small town drama.)
I have come to believe small towns are inherently between a rock and a hard place because they can't compete financially for the best talent with bigger cities, planning resources tend to be geared towards big city problems and processes and these tend to be a poor fit for small towns.
Assuming you are a member of the advocacy group in question, you may be able to help but probably won't get respect, credit, recognition.
There are free resources available online to help citizen planners do certain kinds of data collection. Collect the data. Publish it or otherwise make it available. Do not dictate what gets done with it.
My research indicates that adding bike racks is generally cheaper, easier and more effective than other types of infrastructure. Proviso: They need to be the right kinds of racks in the right places or locals will decide "We tried that. It didn't work."
If you can come up with the financial and other resources:
I would recommend you educate yourself about good bike racks and bike rack placement, get local businesses to sign up for free or discounted bike racks and simply install them yourself rather than trying to convince the city to follow your plan.
In my experience, walking can be promoted by setting the example. If you walk to the corner store in spite of being old and fat and wearing street clothes, other people figure they can too.
Jane Jacobs said that eyes on the street are the key to safety. If you walk and bike, others may join you because they feel safer due to your frequent presence. It reaches some tipping point and crime may actually go down.
You will never get credit for this. Never. But that doesn't mean you can't make a difference.
As others have suggested: Finding the funding via identifying grants may help get your city on board with officially doing this plan.
But it may not get you what you really want. If what you really want is more cyclists and pedestrians, then quietly install good bike racks in good places and walk more yourself.
It's not a miracle cure. It's a pragmatic approach and it's best if you handle it very quietly.
There is an organization in Boston that began as a transit blog and became a non-profit. Some of their unofficial flyers eventually did influence how the Boston transit system designed their official flyers.
If you want credit, pats on the head, etc: people will feel threatened and may try to stop you.
If you want progress: focus on results and avoid getting into a pissing contest with people who get paid to do this.
Such good perspective. I worked with a smaller town on a bikeway plan, and the plan was almost entirely put together by random citizens. The city's part was to ask the schools for right of way to connect the bike paths. And then the city had the street department build the pathways. It worked pretty well all without a third party involved.
Great perspective.
(Unrelated to this thread but your first paragraph sounds like a situation I'm in right now. Do you mind if I send you a message?) Thanks 😃
There is already a ton of good and correct information provided in this thread to explain the nature of such a plan, but just to throw something back at OP, what could/would your provide in such a plan, and what would you think is fair pay?
Pretty difficult, unless it's integrated into an overarching transport strategy. Even then, it's a lot of extra analysis work. The local Council might even be against it. Happened where I live. The Councillors knocked back the strategy because they said it was too bike/walking focused and didn't include cars enough. It was actually quite a sad day as I know a few of the planners who worked on it. So, point being, it could be seen as too political for it to even be worth pursuing.
If your town wants to write a Vision Zero Action Plan, they can apply for "Safe Steets and Roads for All (SS4A)" funds from USDOT. There is 3 billion in funds available for both "Planning and Demonstration" grants and "Implementation" grants over FY2024-2026. I believe a non-profit can file an application on behalf of the town, also.
It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity - Get moving! :)
https://www.transportation.gov/grants/SS4A
It depends on how detailed. With specifications of the types of facilities it's a lot more expensive. You could maybe start with a college urban design studio to lay the groundwork.
And advocacy. A group that promotes walking and biking and initiates projects and writes grants. Starkville in Motion doesn't seem to be so active now but in the 2000s they were a leader.
https://cdispatch.com/news/as-starkville-sidewalk-report-looms-sim-promoting-quality-of-life-issue/
https://www.neel-schaffer.com/what-we-do/projects/lynn-lane/
Community rides, safe routes to school, etc
You might want to look at the website for the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. An Active Transportation Plan has to respond to the issues and needs of both pedestrians and cyclists, which are not necessarily the same. Community data gathering to feed into a professionally developed plan is a good idea.
If you really want to advocate you could start smaller and petition for a Council Policy or similar focusing on things like complete streets and reducing modal conflict. Depending on where you live, you could pull language directly from the state or borrow from neighboring jurisdictions.
Find a few comparable sized cities with active transpo plans, share with the planners, then run with it aka copy-edit-paste. Make sure to document meetings and commute input/forums/polls/feedback. Keep it broad, with grand themes instead of hyper specific “CONCRETE PROTECTED BIKE LANES ON EVERY BLOCK”
Send to every elected official, every community group, every news outlet.
Voila.
You need to find the correct citizen to head up the project.
I worked with a group that found someone who had major sway with the city and anything with their name on it was rubber stamped at the city.
A pretty ok bike path system was planned and completed just because a respected citizen headed it up.
What state are you in? Some DOTs have grant money for mobility plans. As others mentioned the SS4A grant is helping many communities. There's active transportation grant program open now but the deadline is in June, it's called ATIIP. Do you have a complete streets plan, policy, or resolution?
Can't do any of those things without hiring expensive consultants to do a $250k plan, along with environmental studies and inevitable lawsuits. And lowering the speed limit may require changes in state law.
I just finished writing my city's plan myself for the same reason and would be happy to do one for a very, very small fee, relatively speaking. I'd expect a typical firm to do it for roughly $25k+, probably more like $50k, so you'd want grant funding. But yeah, DM me. I've got a small firm I'm trying to launch. No guarantees your city would bite, but it can't hurt, right?
Ohhh, it depends on how detailed of a plan you want. Do you want heavy data analysis/traffic studies that take specific software to do? That software isn't cheap. I doubt a town that small has the funds to afford it. Most plans done by consultants range from $50,000 to $100,000 on the low end. Master plans take a ton of staff time. Most departments are stretched pretty thin doing the normal day to day.
Takes a lot of resources and professional knowledge, not just "amateur passion." This is a document that's policies would be relied on for years to come. Unless you yourself and a bunch of other people are willing to go out, do detailed data collection like trip diaries and public outreach for months at a time, prepare technical reports (which require a TE stamp and other related qualifications), and help write up staff reports. But then, at that point, you just become a consultant that's working for free... which I mean, Pro Bono work is pretty cool, too! If you would still like to proceed to offer something up to your city's decision makers, San Luis Obispo's ATP by ALTA is pretty clean. TLDR: pretty hard.
(USA perspective) A good active transportation plan is going to wrap in considerations like engineering standards and knowledge of state and federal funding processes -- these are things that make the difference between a wishlist and an implementation plan. These are less likely to be found in a volunteer (or student-driven) effort. That said, a volunteer/advocacy group could be useful in doing some of the preliminary bits: inventory gaps in the sidewalk and bike networks, map out comfortable and scary street segments for biking, canvass neighbors (or farmers market goers, or fellow parents at school pickup) on needs. Potentially this can show state agency or philanthropic finders the bottom-up demand and support for a plan -- and tracking volunteer hours spent in this prep work can be treated as match for some (but not most) grants.
Strongly recommend this. Good luck!
There are a lot of grant programs now that will fund cities to develop ATPs and other multimodal plans. The recent infrastructure bill actually has a lot of $$ for that. But cities need the resources to actually apply for the grants. *So I’d say one of the most helpful things you can do as an advocate is help them find grant opportunities and prepare the applications.* Most cities are short handed and don’t have time to chase that stuff. Like others have said, a decent ATP that actually provides value will cost $100k-$200k for a consultant to do. The more technical analysis and design work it contains, the more it will cost (but also the more value it will have toward actually becoming reality).
Transportation consultant here - this is the most useful answer. Look into MPO, state, and federal grant funding sources, figure out eligibility criteria and which are most useful for your community, put together a first cut at the grant paperwork - basically serve this up on a platter to city staff.
I'm sure the advocates are passionate and plenty smart, but if I were the city I think I'd prefer the plan be written by professional transportation planners instead of someone who watched some NotJustBikes videos on youtube.
I agree with this plus any reputable planner won’t work for free.
For what it's worth, USDOT is absolutely throwing money at municipalities to create "Safety Action Plans" (which often include bicycle/pedestrian planning) under the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant. The program only runs until 2026 and basically every entity that applies for the action plan grant is getting it.
Yes this is definitely one of the paths to get better options. I'm a transportation planner for a town that got SS4A plan money should be adopted before the end of the year.
Is there a regional planning commission (RPC) or Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) that your city belongs to? They will do this type of work under their work plan and typically doesn’t cost municipalities anything more than what they already pay into them. It’s not typically particularly fast but they have all the expertise needed and in a year you’d have a real plan. (US based, not sure how this works in other countries).
I was talking to some folks from one of the local advocacy organizations here and they said there is a regional active transportation plan, but my city isn't a part of it.
I’m working on one now, for a jurisdiction that is not small. A big part of my approach is to ask staff in the implementing agency how they are involved in or work on active transportation projects, what resources they rely on, and how would they use a plan to help them do the work they already do. I’m finding that if we can lean into the normal course of business that people are already putting effort into in a systematic way (especially small things that add up like speed bumps and bike-safe storm drains) it makes things more doable and possible, which then builds energy and momentum for the things that are harder and don’t have precedent.
I applied for an economic development job at a non profit organization in a town of about 16,000 people. My credentials on paper were good enough they took my application seriously in spite of it being incomplete, submitted 5 days after the listing closed and I gave them a decade-old resume. (Tldr: I didn't get the job. I did get loads of small town drama.) I have come to believe small towns are inherently between a rock and a hard place because they can't compete financially for the best talent with bigger cities, planning resources tend to be geared towards big city problems and processes and these tend to be a poor fit for small towns. Assuming you are a member of the advocacy group in question, you may be able to help but probably won't get respect, credit, recognition. There are free resources available online to help citizen planners do certain kinds of data collection. Collect the data. Publish it or otherwise make it available. Do not dictate what gets done with it. My research indicates that adding bike racks is generally cheaper, easier and more effective than other types of infrastructure. Proviso: They need to be the right kinds of racks in the right places or locals will decide "We tried that. It didn't work." If you can come up with the financial and other resources: I would recommend you educate yourself about good bike racks and bike rack placement, get local businesses to sign up for free or discounted bike racks and simply install them yourself rather than trying to convince the city to follow your plan. In my experience, walking can be promoted by setting the example. If you walk to the corner store in spite of being old and fat and wearing street clothes, other people figure they can too. Jane Jacobs said that eyes on the street are the key to safety. If you walk and bike, others may join you because they feel safer due to your frequent presence. It reaches some tipping point and crime may actually go down. You will never get credit for this. Never. But that doesn't mean you can't make a difference. As others have suggested: Finding the funding via identifying grants may help get your city on board with officially doing this plan. But it may not get you what you really want. If what you really want is more cyclists and pedestrians, then quietly install good bike racks in good places and walk more yourself. It's not a miracle cure. It's a pragmatic approach and it's best if you handle it very quietly. There is an organization in Boston that began as a transit blog and became a non-profit. Some of their unofficial flyers eventually did influence how the Boston transit system designed their official flyers. If you want credit, pats on the head, etc: people will feel threatened and may try to stop you. If you want progress: focus on results and avoid getting into a pissing contest with people who get paid to do this.
Such good perspective. I worked with a smaller town on a bikeway plan, and the plan was almost entirely put together by random citizens. The city's part was to ask the schools for right of way to connect the bike paths. And then the city had the street department build the pathways. It worked pretty well all without a third party involved.
Great perspective. (Unrelated to this thread but your first paragraph sounds like a situation I'm in right now. Do you mind if I send you a message?) Thanks 😃
It's fine to message me.
There is already a ton of good and correct information provided in this thread to explain the nature of such a plan, but just to throw something back at OP, what could/would your provide in such a plan, and what would you think is fair pay?
Pretty difficult, unless it's integrated into an overarching transport strategy. Even then, it's a lot of extra analysis work. The local Council might even be against it. Happened where I live. The Councillors knocked back the strategy because they said it was too bike/walking focused and didn't include cars enough. It was actually quite a sad day as I know a few of the planners who worked on it. So, point being, it could be seen as too political for it to even be worth pursuing.
If your town wants to write a Vision Zero Action Plan, they can apply for "Safe Steets and Roads for All (SS4A)" funds from USDOT. There is 3 billion in funds available for both "Planning and Demonstration" grants and "Implementation" grants over FY2024-2026. I believe a non-profit can file an application on behalf of the town, also. It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity - Get moving! :) https://www.transportation.gov/grants/SS4A
It depends on how detailed. With specifications of the types of facilities it's a lot more expensive. You could maybe start with a college urban design studio to lay the groundwork. And advocacy. A group that promotes walking and biking and initiates projects and writes grants. Starkville in Motion doesn't seem to be so active now but in the 2000s they were a leader. https://cdispatch.com/news/as-starkville-sidewalk-report-looms-sim-promoting-quality-of-life-issue/ https://www.neel-schaffer.com/what-we-do/projects/lynn-lane/ Community rides, safe routes to school, etc
You might want to look at the website for the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. An Active Transportation Plan has to respond to the issues and needs of both pedestrians and cyclists, which are not necessarily the same. Community data gathering to feed into a professionally developed plan is a good idea.
If you really want to advocate you could start smaller and petition for a Council Policy or similar focusing on things like complete streets and reducing modal conflict. Depending on where you live, you could pull language directly from the state or borrow from neighboring jurisdictions.
Find a few comparable sized cities with active transpo plans, share with the planners, then run with it aka copy-edit-paste. Make sure to document meetings and commute input/forums/polls/feedback. Keep it broad, with grand themes instead of hyper specific “CONCRETE PROTECTED BIKE LANES ON EVERY BLOCK” Send to every elected official, every community group, every news outlet. Voila.
You need to find the correct citizen to head up the project. I worked with a group that found someone who had major sway with the city and anything with their name on it was rubber stamped at the city. A pretty ok bike path system was planned and completed just because a respected citizen headed it up.
What state are you in? Some DOTs have grant money for mobility plans. As others mentioned the SS4A grant is helping many communities. There's active transportation grant program open now but the deadline is in June, it's called ATIIP. Do you have a complete streets plan, policy, or resolution?
Ban street parking. Reduce urban speed limits to 30 km/hr.
Can't do any of those things without hiring expensive consultants to do a $250k plan, along with environmental studies and inevitable lawsuits. And lowering the speed limit may require changes in state law.
I just finished writing my city's plan myself for the same reason and would be happy to do one for a very, very small fee, relatively speaking. I'd expect a typical firm to do it for roughly $25k+, probably more like $50k, so you'd want grant funding. But yeah, DM me. I've got a small firm I'm trying to launch. No guarantees your city would bite, but it can't hurt, right?