TEI led development of the Houston Bike Plan, the first comprehensive bicycle master plan for the City of Houston in more than 20 years. This project came at a critical time for the City, as the number of people biking had grown rapidly and interest in becoming a safer, healthier, more bike friendly city has greatly increased.
The City of Houston was recently recognized as a Bronze Level Bicycle Friendly City. The Bike Plan aims to create step change improvements to achieve Houston’s full potential as a great bicycling city, with the support of Houston’s diverse and growing bicycling community. By doing an in-depth analysis of existing bikeways and trip patterns in the city, working with a Bicycle Advisory Committee of community leaders, and engaging people across the city, the TEI team:
- Developed strong consensus on a vision and well-defined goals for bicycling related to safety, access, ridership, and maintenance that support bicycling for people of all ages and abilities;
- Captured citywide and neighborhood-level insights on opportunities to make bicycling better and what barriers exist to more people riding; and
- Identified a toolbox of projects, policies, and programs to foster and protect Houston’s growing culture of active transportation.
Robust public engagement included community-based goal setting, educational bike rides, a bicycle network planning game, and outreach at community events. Online engagement included an interactive map that allowed participants to draw ideas, online forums, bilingual web-based surveys, and Meeting in a Box to allow people to hold their own bike planning meeting.
The plan proposed a comprehensive, well-connected network of low-stress, high-comfort bikeways, as well as pilot projects and an implementation framework. The first wave of implementation included designing 50 miles of new bikeways for construction in under a year.
Houston bicycle culture
Houston’s bicycling community is diverse and enthusiastic, and the number of people biking has grown rapidly in recent years.
Goals for bicycling
Robust public engagement included community-based goal setting.
Educational bike ride
Robust public engagement included educational community bike rides.
Bicycle Toolbox
The bike plan identified a toolbox of projects, policies, and programs to foster and protect Houston’s growing culture of active transportation.
Houston Bikeways program
Houston Public Works and the Houston Planning Department work with an appointed Bicycle Advisory Committee to advance bike-friendly city policies.
Implementation underway
The Houston Bikeway Initiative is an award-winning partnerhip between Harris County Precinct One and City of Houston, rapidly advancing implementation of the Houston Bike Plan.
