Teaching Pedestrian and Bicycle Concepts to the Next Generation of Transportation Leaders

If you teach them, they will come. That was our motto as we updated the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation University Course. Thousands of universities, junior, technical, and community colleges offer foundational coursework for future transportation practitioners. They play a critical role in preparing future professionals to address transportation challenges and building skills they’ll need on their first day of work and throughout their careers. There are more than 300 accredited civil engineering programs in the U.S. and nearly 100 accredited graduate or undergraduate degree programs in planning. The new course provides educators with the tools they need to inspire thousands of students to support safe and vibrant multimodal transportation systems.

The FHWA Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation University Course is designed to help students recognize the legitimacy of bicycle and pedestrian modes; understand how policy, planning, and engineering practices can be improved to create a more balanced transportation system; and become familiar with basic policies, practices, tools, and design principles that can be used to create bicycle and pedestrian-friendly communities. The course content fits concisely within planning and engineering programs, and is relevant for courses in policy, public health, public administration, or landscape architecture.

The FHWA course update includes pedestrian and bicycle course materials broadly applicable to diverse student audiences and learning styles and adaptable to instructor needs and contexts. The FHWA course offers a solid starting point for someone new to teaching bicycle and pedestrian topics and should provide a quick reference for those who already teach these topics, but want a source for new resources, images, and examples. The materials can also be used for self-directed learning by those who already work in the transportation field.

The FHWA course contains 21 presentations with detailed speaker notes and complementary assignments, readings, and videos. Most of the individual lessons fit into one of these six broader topics:

1. Principles of designing for people walking and bicycling.
2. Strategies for safer vehicle speeds.
3. Facility and network evaluation.
4. Data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
5. Transit and emerging modes.
6. Public engagement and leadership.

An example of the breadth and depth of content in a lesson is demonstrated in the module entitled Safety Analysis. This lesson introduces current methods and challenges for measuring safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. The module covers specific topics like crash data analysis and interpretation, tools for countermeasure selection, safety effectiveness evaluation, and the roadway safety management process. Most lessons include at least one case study example. In this lesson, Washington, DC’s use of leading pedestrian intervals (LPI) at all eligible locations is an example that illustrates a system-wide approach to improving safety. The recommended assignment for this module is a network screening exercise that includes a data set of roadway segment characteristics from a large U.S. city. Students are asked to sort the data using different measures of safety and discuss the differences.

The course materials and an informational webinar are available for download at www.pedbikeinfo.org/FHWAcourse. If you’re already using the materials and equipping our future generations of practitioners, please contact Becky Crowe at rebecca.crowe@dot.gov and share your experiences of how you’re bringing the next generation into the transportation field.